“We’ve got the whole world in our hands, we’ve got to save our forests and public lands,” sang the Raging Grannies outside the Department of Natural Resources building on the Capitol Campus in Olympia on Tuesday. “Pressure the DNR and make demands, we’ve got the forest in our hands.”
The musical group was among the nearly 200 protesters gathered outside the DNR’s headquarters where a Board of Natural Resources meeting was slated to review local timber sales from this summer, among other agenda items.
People from around Western Washington gathered with the Summit Lake Alliance to protest the DNR’s management of state lands and continued clear-cutting of trees they think should be conserved. Brel Froebe, with the Center for Responsible Forestry, led the event and introduced several speakers, including Thurston County Commissioners Tye Menser and Carolina Mejia, who attended as part of their Tuesday board meeting.
Froebe said the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously ruled in July in Conservation Northwest v. Commissioner of Public Lands that the DNR is not obligated to only manage forests for profit, that it can instead find other ways its stakeholders can benefit.
In response, more than 20 groups came together Tuesday to present the DNR with a “call to action” on how the agency could manage state’s trust land under that ruling.
Menser wants the DNR to formally recognize the value of what environmentalists call legacy forests and to stop cutting these trees in not only Thurston County, but the whole state.
The advocacy groups define legacy forests as “one of many naturally regenerated forest landscapes selectively harvested before World War II (before the age of fossil-fueled chainsaws) that are now on a healthy trajectory to old growth.” However, DNR spokesperson Kenny Ocker said the DNR doesn’t recognize the term, and “old growth” forests are what they pay attention to. He said any parcel that predates 1850 and is more than 5 acres in size is immediately set aside for conservation and labeled old growth.
Singular trees that are older than 1850 are set aside as leave trees in proposed cut areas. Any tree larger than 60 inches in diameter, regardless of age, requires approval from the Board of Natural Resources to be cut.
But Menser said it seems clear that forests that have never been clear cut would have fundamentally different character than those that have been.
“I believe that looking at trees and forests more than 80 years old is a scientifically significant distinction,” Menser said. “Yet the DNR has been unwilling to recognize this critical distinction when it comes to clear cuts.”
Menser said the topic is important to him, since he represents the district where much of Capitol State Forest is located, and where Summit Lake and other groups have expressed concern. He’s also the vice chair of the Regional Climate Action steering committee, where he said they’re continuing to work to meet aggressive local greenhouse gas reduction targets on a rapidly shrinking timeline as climate change worsens conditions.
“And it’s important to me as a father of two children, and a citizen of this planet who wants to be able to look our young people in the eyes and tell them we did as much as we could to leave them a clean and healthy planet,” Menser said.
The Center for Responsible Forestry, a nonprofit organization, estimates there’s 3,100 acres of unprotected legacy forests in state managed lands. That represents about 4.5% of land managed by DNR, Menser said, but the majority of that is scheduled to be cut between now and 2026.
On June 16, the Board of County Commissioners sent a letter to the DNR, asking to protect all remaining “legacy forests” in Thurston County. It was followed by a similar letter from the Thurston Regional Climate Action steering committee. Menser said he’s spoken to other regional stakeholders, including the Port of Olympia and the Timberland Regional Library, and their leadership feels the same way.
Menser said the DNR continues to argue that they’re bound by the courts to maximize revenue with timber sales, rather than prioritize carbon sequestration, habitat restoration or climate change mitigation.
“It is disheartening to be working at cross purposes with state agencies that have not fully adapted their analyses and practices to the reality of climate change,” Menser said. “We know the world is rapidly changing. Court cases from 1918 should not control how state forests are managed in Washington.”
Mejia told the groups that the county’s attempts to get the DNR to address Summit Lake’s concerns haven’t been taken seriously. Residents have been rallying since last fall against a proposed 16-acre cut on the southeast side of the lake, on a hill above their homes.
Mejia said they’re worried about potential for increased algae blooms in Summit Lake, water quality issues that could affect hundreds, property damage and more. But they’ve been met with the same answer, that DNR is constrained by law to do the cuts. She said the DNR has recognized only some of their concerns.
The Forest Practices Applications for the timber cuts around Summit Lake were refiled in August, after the sales were paused to address the county’s concerns.
“Partnerships are built on good communication and trust,” Mejia said. “And we aren’t receiving that from the DNR, not as a board of County Commissioners and not as a community. As long as they keep having that attitude, we will keep showing up here, and you will have the support.”
The commissioners want harvests of legacy forests in Thurston County to be paused until the DNR has allowed old growth forests to naturally regenerate across 10% of its land in the county. Menser said mapping of forests and data has been given to the DNR to enact it, and it’s in line with the department’s 2006 Policy for Sustainable Forests.
Lastly, Menser said they want the DNR to explore alternative strategies for long-term management of forests that “will recognize the increasing and existential ecological challenges we face and better protect our shared natural heritage.”
Carly Lloyd, a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, wants the DNR to end the link between logging and education budgets.
Lloyd said she often spends time with friends in the forests where cuts are proposed. They document and photograph what they encounter, in case it’s the last time anyone sees the forest.
All of this gets sent to the DNR, she said, in hopes that it cancels the sale.
“I want the DNR to uphold the call to action, de-linking logging from education budgets, because the most valuable education for us is going to come from forests left standing,” Lloyd said. “The areas can be used for research and conservation, education and more.”
Julianne Gale, from Mason County, said she lives in a timber community that’s been made to feel like the timber companies’ interests are the same as theirs, and that there hasn’t been much investment in rural Washington.
With a background in teaching and as a union construction worker, Gale said the forests and natural resources in the community are necessary for people’s well-being.
“The forests in Washington sequester more carbon than the Amazon Rainforest,” she said. “The world is depending on us.”
Though Ocker said the term “legacy forest” doesn’t have scientific backing, he said the DNR is continuing to explore how it manages older forests. More than half of state land in Western Washington is already under conservation status, with a much smaller percentage of land in Thurston County not currently being protected, he said.
Ocker said the DNR already protects some of these younger “legacy forests” in a myriad of ways, including through its trust lands and natural areas program. He said approximately 1 million acres are managed solely for conservation in Washington, with a plan to conserve more before the end of the century.
He said the DNR’s conservation plans have always included the public in the process and they will continue to consider climate concerns in future planning. The DNR’s Sustainable Harvest Calculation, which determines how much timber they’re going to harvest in the next decade, was last set in 2019 following a conservation plan amendment for marbled murrelets. The next one will be set for 2025-2034, so the DNR is preparing for plenty of input. One of the “call to action” items the advocacy groups listed was having climate change specifically analyzed in every harvest under the new calculation. Ocker said they did so under the last one, and they plan to include a climate change analysis in the future as well.
Ocker said the DNR continues to get support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its land management, and they believe they’re protecting the most important habitats already. But it’s a balancing act.
The department’s Habitat Conservation Plan, which was adopted in 1997, has an outlook of 100 years and a conservation goal set for 2097. Ocker said it comes down to specifics on every cut and parcel, and sometimes, what’s living there. For instance, a spotted owl may nest in trees but it hunts in more open areas. Rather than clear cutting an area, it would be partially conserved through tree thinning so there’s still some cover for wildlife, he said.
But the habitat for a marbled murrelet is far more meaningful, Ocker said. They’re often seen nesting in old-growth forests and have been listed as endangered due in part to logging. A parcel that may house the small seabirds may be conserved, which means another parcel somewhere else may take its place on the cut list.
“We still have 75 years of work that we’re planning to do under our HCP, and this work remains ongoing,” Ocker said. “The HCP goal is to protect a certain amount across the entire landscape, and we remain on task to do that with the 2097 goal.”
Ocker said the DNR discussed a pilot program during Tuesday’s meeting that could get more land into conservation. Called the Trust Land Transfer, it started in 1989 but is up for a makeover.
The program takes under-performing state trust lands out of trust status and into conservation, if it has high ecological value and/or public interest. Over the last 30 years, nearly 126,000 acres have been transferred and much of it conserved. The land is replaced “with lands that can generate revenue for trust beneficiaries,” according to the DNR.
Ocker said there are 10 parcels being used for the pilot program. None of the parcels are located in Thurston or Lewis counties, but he said there could be some in the future.
“The state Supreme Court has made it clear we have a wide latitude to manage state lands, but we still have the obligation to trust beneficiaries as their trust manager to protect their fiduciary interests,” Ocker said.
In response to the Board of County Commissioners’ claims, Ocker said he doesn’t think the DNR’s work shows a lack of trust or communication. He said when concerns were brought up about the timber harvest at Summit Lake, the harvest was postponed until a hydrologic assessment was completed.
He said the application for the harvest will likely be brought back to the Board of Natural Resources in October.
