Logging operations on public land in Washington state. (Washington State Department of Natural Resources)
On his first day in office, Dave Upthegrove, the state’s new public lands commissioner, said he would pause logging sales in some older state-managed forests for about six months.
In doing so, he’s taking a step toward fulfilling a campaign promise to preserve nearly 80,000 acres of older, but not necessarily old-growth, trees. How much acreage the pause would cover was not immediately clear, but a Department of Natural Resources spokesperson said Wednesday it would involve slightly more than 20 timber sales.
Upthegrove announced the pause on sales of “certain structurally complex mature forests” shortly after being sworn into office, during remarks to Department of Natural Resources staff.
“During this pause, we’ll deploy cutting-edge technology to better identify and map the characteristics of the forests under our care,” Upthegrove said in his speech, delivered in the lobby of the department’s headquarters in Olympia. “We also will establish criteria for which structurally complex mature forests will help us meet our long-term habitat goals.”
“As someone who has worked for many years as a high school basketball referee, I know when a time-out is needed. And that’s what this is, a time out,” he added. “This process will be inclusive and transparent.”
Growing conflict
Critics of harvesting older state forests have become increasingly vocal in recent years. They say these forests are dwindling yet are critical for the environment. And they question whether the state is meeting its goals for keeping older forests on public land intact. The trees in question do not qualify for old-growth protections but are in many cases about a century old.
“Commissioner Upthegrove is taking immediate action to resolve a persistent, intractable issue,” Rachel Baker, forest director for Washington Conservation Action, said in a statement.
“He’s making sure the action is science based and well planned. This allows DNR to strike the right balance between public values and timber harvest, and between meeting commitments to agency policy and climate change, and commitments to communities,” Baker added.
The logging and forest products industry is against removing the forestland from the state’s timber sale rotation and says it would hurt lumber mills, jobs, and government revenue and that it shifts the goalposts on past conservation plans. They also argue that certain specialty products — like utility poles and some engineered wood — require older trees to make.
“We’re curious to learn more about his announced plan to pause some timber sales, while still delivering essential revenues to our schools, hospitals, and other local services that depend on DNR’s success,” Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group, said in a statement.
Another piece of the debate, which Joseph alluded to, is that revenue from timber sales goes to support schools and services provided by county governments. A state operating budget deficit estimated to be around $12 billion or more over the next four years could put Upthegrove under pressure to avoid too much of a financial dent in his agency by setting aside lands slated for logging.
Altogether, the agency manages nearly 6 million acres of public land, including about 3 million acres of state “trust lands” that produce revenue — mostly from logging. Timber sale income for the department totaled about $209 million in fiscal year 2023 and the department’s total revenue that year was around $474 million. The state’s overall operating budget is around $70 billion.
Predecessor’s perspective
The state’s previous lands commissioner, Hilary Franz, during an interview last fall, pointed to hundreds of thousands of acres the department has already set aside for conservation and highlighted the environmental benefits of using wood from trees grown in-state, rather than importing it from other places that might have less stringent logging regulations.
She also argued that the state’s forest management practices, like letting trees grow longer before cutting, leaving larger buffers along rivers, and growing multiple species for biodiversity, led to some of the forests that environmental groups now want to protect.
“We’re being told, because you moved to all these higher standards, which the environmentalists have asked us to move to, we’re now being told: ‘don’t cut them’,” she said.
Franz warned of cascading effects if too much logging land is preserved, with mill closures leaving fewer places to process lumber and private forest owners selling land to developers.
“I think the Evergreen State is in a significant moment of trying to figure out what its true identity is, and responsibility, in the face of climate change around our forests,” Franz said.
She described, “a sense of confusion around the importance of us growing our forests here for multiple functions and benefits, that not all forests are the same, that we should be growing our wood products and stimulating the use of our wood products versus steel and concrete.”