Final month, in my first act as commissioner of public lands, I paused the sale of sure structurally complicated, mature forests on state lands.
These are older, second-growth forests — most of which have been logged earlier than World Warfare II — which have spent nearly a century regrowing naturally into various stands teeming with life and contributing invaluable biodiversity.
These forests make up a really small a part of our state forestlands however have an outsize impression on habitat, offering the advantages of old-growth stands.
To make sure our forests are economically sustainable, we should first handle them to be ecologically sustainable by guaranteeing we at all times have a mixture of forest ages and kinds throughout our landscapes.
On the Division of Pure Assets, our current plans and insurance policies envision restoring and sustaining 10% to fifteen% of the forest panorama in Western Washington as structurally complicated mature forests.
My objective is to fulfill this essential habitat goal sooner, guaranteeing the long-term sustainability of our forests and supporting our state’s forest merchandise trade — not simply at this time, however for generations to return.
Just lately, The Seattle Instances editorial board (“Lands commissioner’s logging ‘pause’ upsets a careful calculation,” Jan. 30) characterised this pause as “setting apart” 80,000 acres of forest; that I’m proposing we lock up our forests and yank funding away from faculties, counties and different belief beneficiaries.
Nothing could possibly be farther from the reality.
I’m not setting our forests apart. I’m setting them on a greater path.
A path that ensures we extra rapidly attain the habitat outcomes we wish for our forests. A path to raised meet our habitat safety and environmental targets, to raised promote biodiversity throughout our forestlands and to raised meet the challenges and selections of a altering world.
My plan, as soon as we’ve got new standards in place, will merely defer some gross sales whereas prioritizing others till we attain our habitat targets. In doing so, we’ll hit these habitat targets sooner — whereas enabling us to realize the sort of long-term sustainability we all need.
Gross sales of structurally complicated mature forests have constantly confronted lawsuits from environmental organizations. In Capitol Forest alone, 5 latest gross sales are presently caught up in litigation.
That is no means to offer certainty to Washington’s timber trade — and the communities who rely on forest product income.
We will do higher, as a result of we already understand how.
Washington is a world chief relating to sustainable forestry. The Division of Pure Assets has an extended legacy of main on forest administration points, setting one of many first old-growth forest insurance policies within the nation and creating sustainable harvest and ecological requirements that stay among the many highest on the planet.
We didn’t get the place we’re by being complacent. We did it by main, adapting and evolving.
Now, to fulfill the wants of a brand new world — to fulfill the challenges offered by a quickly altering local weather, deteriorating forest well being, lowering biodiversity and devastating wildfires — we should evolve once more.
This pause will allow us to just do that, by permitting us time over the subsequent six months or so to perform two important issues:
First, we’ll deploy present know-how and new strategies to raised determine and map the traits of the forests we handle in order that we get a extra correct stock of our forests.
Second, this pause will permit us time to hunt collective enter from our belief beneficiaries — together with faculties, counties and important companies — alongside tribal governments, environmental teams, the trade and the general public — to assist us develop an improved administration plan for these forests.
This open, clear, and inclusive course of will assist us to dial again the yearslong anger and acrimony round these timber gross sales and allow us to realize our shared objective: the long-term financial and environmental sustainability of Washington’s forests.
We aren’t locking up or setting apart these forests. We’ll proceed to nurture and steward them simply as we at all times have — investing of their accountable administration as a way to make our landscapes ecologically more healthy and extra resilient to the specter of wildfire.
And we’ll proceed to fulfill our duties to our state’s faculties, counties and communities — with out the near-constant delays and disruptions we’ve seen in recent times.
I cannot be deterred or delayed by short-term considering, by reflexive defenses of the established order or by individuals who use phrases like “observe the science” once they actually imply “observe the cash.”
It’s time to put aside enterprise as typical, put away the arguments of the previous and set a path ahead that continues to dwell as much as our state’s historical past as a forestry chief.
It’s time to suppose long run and work collectively to safe a extra sustainable future for our forests, our wooden merchandise trade and the folks of Washington.
