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November 29, 2021
Greetings.
Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources regarding the Crush timber sale in Capitol State Forest
For the Crush timber sale, our South Puget Sound region staff thoroughly reviewed the sale area and found no old growth forest within the sale unit. The forests contained in the sale have an estimated origin year between 1939 and 1954
During the timber sales process, there are multiple opportunities for public input, including a public comment period during State Environmental Policy Act review and another before approval by the Board of Natural Resources at its monthly meeting Public comments regarding the Crush timber sale were received, reviewed, and considered prior to the sale’s proposal to and approval by the Board of Natural Resources.
DNR does more than just manage state trust lands to generate reliable revenue to support schools and critical county services across Washington state – the lands are managed to address forest health and climate change, provide wildlife habitat, and offer ample recreation opportunities, too. All of the 2.1 million acres of forests managed by DNR are independently certified as sustainable by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and they are subject to some of the most environmentally responsible forestry rules in the world, as well as the agency’s Policy for Sustainable Forests and its Habitat Conservation Plan with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Still, over the past 50 years, these lands have provided more than 59 billion in non-tax revenue to state and local governments
DNR-managed forests are critical to the supply of timber in Washington State, and keeps us from having to bring in timber from other states or countries. Importing timber means exporting our footprint, and that isn’t environmentally sustainable or environmentally just. If we get our timber from elsewhere, it will be harvested in areas with fewer environmental protections, and there will be a large carbon cost to deliver that product to Washington State.
Statewide, 40 percent of DNR managed trust lands statewide (840,000 acres) – including more than 50 percent of land west of the Cascades – are already managed for habitat conservation. This accounts for buffers around unstable slopes: wetlands and waterways, habitat conservation areas for marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls, and lynx, and protections for old-growth forest – anything with a stand origin date before 1850. In addition, more than 130.000 acres of forests on DNR managed lands are permanently conserved in Natural Resources Conservation Areas and Natural Area Preserves. The majority (80 percent of forests over 10 years of age are within these conserved areas.
Through its Habitat Conservation Plan, DNR takes a landscape approach to conserving ecologically significant forests, developing a complex forest landscape that has emphasized conservation in the most critical areas. A variety of technical experts contribute to this process, including foresters, engineers, geologists, biologists, hydrologists, archaeologists, to name a few.
The HCP, approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, exceeds the Forest Practices Rules of Washington in numerous ways, including the requirements of a minimum of 8 leave trees per acre. Protections include no-harvest buffers of 100-year tree heights for fish-bearing waters of 100 feet for year-round streams, and leave trees being used to buffer seasonal streams. These buffers are augmented by state Forest Practices Rules that protect unstable slopes from timber harvests to reduce the risk of landslides and sedimentation of water, as well as rules requiring the proper maintenance and construction of forest roads to protect fish habitat.
Leave trees are used to provide habitat and environmental connection between harvest operations and provide more complex and resilient forests as new trees grow. Strategies include retaining a mix of standing, dying, large and small trees that represent the pre-harvest stand as a whole. For the Crush timber sale,our foresters were able to design a leave tree retention strategy that met all of those needs while protecting a recreation Trail in the area.
Before DNR ever brings a proposed timber sale to auction, it does so with a plan that describes how the area will be reforested after harvest activities are complete. The agency replants trees at per-acre levels that far exceed the minimum requirements set out in the Forest Practices Rules to ensure that forests are far more likely to regenerate successfully
Thank you again for your interest in DNR’s sustainable management of its state trust forests.
Regards,
Angus W. Brodie
Deputy Supervisor for State Uplands