Washington Forests Reach a Critical Junction

Washington Forests Reach Critical Junction

Managing Washington’s private forestlands for values beyond timber revenue

written and photographed by Daniel O’Neil

IN JANUARY 2020, a coalition of conservation groups filed a complaint in the King County Superior Court demanding that the Washington Department of Natural Resources manage state trust forestlands for values other than timber revenue. Citing the state’s constitution, which holds that “all the public lands granted to the state are held in trust for all the people,” the coalition argued that intensive clearcut logging degraded the state’s social and environmental wellbeing. The conservationists lost and appealed.

Last July, the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld DNR’s mandate to log the two million acres of forested state trust lands, which provide funding to schools and other public services. “DNR’s discretionary land management strategies are neither unconstitutional nor arbitrary and capricious,” the court said. The ruling illustrated the conflict and challenges behind repurposing Washington’s public and private forests for interests like carbon sequestration, recreation and healthy ecosystems.

Pulp and lumber mills, log yards and docks line the Columbia River at Longview, one of Washington’s largest timber towns.

A look at the numbers and laws of forest ownership in Washington reveals why. The federal government owns the most trees in Washington, almost 10 million acres, or 43 percent of the total forestland. Much of this, including three National Parks and myriad other nature preserves, cannot be logged. The national forests in Washington, formerly cut with abandon, now enjoy a reprieve from the chainsaws.

The state owns 12 percent of Washington’s total 22 million forested acres. Some of this is protected, but the trust lands are not. Counties and municipalities own a mere 1.5 percent. Tribes own 8 percent of the total and manage their forests for timber, traditional foods, conservation and carbon sequestration.

That leaves one third of Washington’s forests, close to 8 million acres, in private hands. Private forest can be divided into two categories: industrial, which is managed exclusively for forest products; and non-industrial, which can include anything from small timberland owners to conservation groups and everyday property owners. With more than 4.6 million acres, or 21 percent, of Washington’s total forestland in its possession, the private industrial sector is the state’s second-largest forestland owner.

Some of Washington’s “working forests” belong to large, family-owned timber companies. The majority of this industrial forestland, however, lies in the portfolios of investment firms. As the timber juggernauts grew top-heavy in the 1980s, they began to sell forestland and assets to buyers seeking durable investments. Enter the TIMOs (Timber Investment Management Organizations) and RE- ITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts, of which Weyerhaeuser is now one). In their hands, forests are traded on Wall Street and profits go to stockholders worldwide, to retirement funds, to private equity firms and so on. Most private industrial timberland in Washington carries a burden to deliver investment returns, meaning it must be cut, constantly.

Washington’s Forest Practices Rules govern private forestry operations and require, for example, tree replanting and setbacks from streams. But, this is America. “Private forestlands are exactly that: private,” said Matt Cominsky, Washington manager at the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry trade group. “Which means the landowner gets to manage the land, in accordance with state and federal laws, in a way that is most advantageous for them.”

For decades conservationists in Washington State have battled to protect forests, with some success. Paula Swedeen has worked on forest conservation issues here for the past thirty years. She currently serves as policy director at Conservation Northwest, a Seattlebased nonprofit. While assigning resources to projects like safeguarding ecologically-significant lands from industrial ownership, or pursuing public funds to secure for-sale timberland, Swedeen remains realistic.

“It would likely be socially and economically impossible to remove a lot of land from harvest,” Swedeen said. “I’ve had timber executives tell me, ‘You can never pay us enough to manage the way you want us to manage, so you’re welcome to try to purchase the land when it comes up for sale.’”

In Washington’s forests, money does grow on trees. Conservation and other environmental groups like land trusts fully comprehend this law of natural resource economics. The Nisqually Land Trust, for example, meets “big timber” on its own terms.

“When we’re faced with a situation in which commercial forestry and salmon recovery seem incompatible, we look for market solutions,” said Jeanette Dorner, executive director of the Nisqually Land Trust. “We work with timber companies to identify sensitive lands, then we raise the money to purchase those lands at full market value. And then, essentially, we adapt forest management to prioritize fish returns rather than shareholder returns.

Fresh logs pile up in a Washington timber yard. Unlike from public land, whole logs from privately owned land can be milled overseas, which costs local jobs.

Funding, however, poses a major challenge to this type of land conservation. “Securing enough funding for site purchase is incredibly difficult,” said Daniel Wear, Community Forests Program manager at Sustainable Northwest, a conservation nonprofit. “It takes significant time to align purchase-ready opportunities with annual or biennial funding cycles from the state or federal government. This is why land purchases often use multiple sources, stemming from federal, state and private funders.”

Land trusts and other non-governmental organizations do not just let their lands grow. Logging represents a portion of these environmental groups’ forestry management plans. Taxes, road maintenance and restoration projects all cost money, some of which timber provides. This, in turn, creates local jobs, healthier forests and wood products.

Environmental and timber groups don’t always clash. “We tend to disagree more about the how, when, where, and how much timber is harvested, and not the ‘should we or should we not harvest trees’ argument,” Cominsky said. For instance, both sides hate to see forestland converted into nonforest uses. Over large areas, forest fragmentation precludes long-term forest management. Housing developments, strip malls, and parking lots will not become forested again.

“Increased recreation is a public benefit that can help prevent transition of private forest lands to non-forest uses,” Wear said. “Residents who experience the incredible forests that the State of Washington has to offer are more likely to join in advocacy campaigns to increase funding available for land preservation and maintenance of working forestlands.”

Trailheads and other recreation sites in Washington’s forests have become exceedingly popular. In 2020, the outdoor recreation industry contributed $10.3 billion and 113,933 jobs to Washington’s economy. Economists and scientists now correlate protected natural areas with socio-economic prosperity, and the opposite for areas of resource extraction.

But the state trust lands cannot be converted into new recreational land because recreation fees simply do not offer enough revenue to meet the costly requirements of the trust mandate. On private land the story is no different. Industrial forest will remain so until a more lucrative opportunity arises. Hiking, mountain biking, hunting and fishing cannot compete with price per million board feet.

“If you want change, someone else has to own it,” Swedeen said. “There are companies from Brazil, companies based on the East Coast, that own and manage forestland in Washington State, and it’s for investors that have no attachment whatsoever to our land. You could still actively manage that land for timber, but own it and do it in a way that benefits local communities. The community forest movement is trying to do that.”

Regeneration harvest, or clearcutting, remains a prevalent, profit-maximizing forestry method in Washington, especially here in the Willapa Hills. Conservationists work to encourage more ecologically sound practices.

Owned and managed by local partners, community forests provide mutual social, economic and ecological benefits, all tied to a long-term vision. Maintenance and restoration work require labor, and careful, selective logging provides revenue. Recreation permits and tourism can bring in more dollars. This income stays in the community, and more trees stay in the ground than if it were industrial timberland.

The Nason Ridge Community Forest, which borders Lake Wenatchee State Park in Chelan County, required years of cooperative planning and multi-source funding before Weyerhaeuser agreed to sell the 3,714-acre property to local ownership last April. Local interests and conservation groups had identified the land as a priority site to protect wildlife habitat and ecosystems, provide economic stability and offer year-round recreation. Under Washington’s lax land-use laws, the area could have been developed instead.

Chelan County now manages the Nason Ridge Community Forest. Washington State and the U.S. Forest Service both have community forest programs to facilitate projects like this. “The development of local forest ownership, such as community forestry, is an increasingly popular method in the Pacific Northwest to pursue diverse outcomes and a suite of public benefits,” Wear said.

Tribal buy-back of forestland in Washington represents another growing means of regaining land from industrial forestry. Tribes including the Muckleshoot, Snoqualmie and Makah have begun purchasing forests in their ancestral territories. While some of these lands will provide long-term timber revenue, other swaths receive protection for traditional values and cultural foods and materials. Other tribes, such as the Colville, have entered their forests into the emerging market of carbon credits.

As companies like Microsoft and utilities like Puget Sound Energy seek to offset or draw down their carbon emissions, a voluntary market of carbon credits has sprouted. Essentially, businesses pay landowners not to cut their trees. The Colville Tribes have guaranteed to preserve almost half a million acres of forest for the next 100 years, allowing those trees to pull and store carbon from the atmosphere. Other forestland owners, including land trusts, community forests and smaller timber companies, have also begun selling carbon credits. The State of Washington this year announced a 10,000-acre carbon sequestration project.

Big timber remains skeptical for many reasons, including economics. “Carbon sequestration in the form of legitimate carbon offset markets can be an additional revenue source to help prevent the conversion to non-forestry uses,” Cominsky said. “But I have not seen carbon credit prices that can replace the revenue from forest management and harvesting timber yet.”

In recent talks with a timber executive, Paula Swedeen heard an encouraging, albeit hypothetical, scenario. With the climate crisis driving pressure on consumer-based companies to mitigate their emissions and image, a cash-heavy company could buy out a large timber company and repurpose the forest to carbon sequestration. “I never would have heard a timber executive say that five years ago,” she said.

Money talks, but laws act. If the citizens of Washington want to dedicate more of their forestland to values such as salmon recovery, carbon sequestration and outdoor recreation, they need the ears of their timber investment managers and local politicians. The state Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of the DNR status quo last July were elected or were appointed by the governor. In a democracy, votes amount to change.

Elected officials can also create taxes, anathema to investment groups and large timber companies. Ernie Niemi, an economist, knows this. He has spent the last forty-five years analyzing the importance of natural resources in Washington and Oregon. Niemi served on the Northern Spotted Owl Implementation Team for the Washington Board of Forestry, and he assisted the conservationists in their recent state Supreme Court case against DNR. “If you want to get industrial lands to behave differently, tax them or give them incentives, or apply regulations on them,” he said.

Niemi looks at the timberland issue from an economist’s perspective. “If the benefits exceed the costs, cut the damn tree down,” he said. “But let’s make sure we count all of the costs. The reality right now is the costs of cutting down any tree in this region probably exceed the benefits. What that means is a two-by-four ought to be a hell of a lot more expensive than it is.”

In Niemi’s view, damage to ecosystems, biodiversity, timber communities and the climate do not figure in the price of wood products. “Put a tax on every million board feet that they cut,” he said. “Give them an incentive to do something else with their investment in these timberlands.” Niemi suggests that when landowners log a forest they pay a tax, and that money then rewards landowners who agree to leave their trees standing instead. “Guess which organization, which community has steadfastly refused to participate in developing such a climate-carbon reward system for their forests?”

Community forests and land trusts can replace REITs and TIMOs in Washington’s forests. Millions of acres of trees can store climate-saving amounts of carbon while providing wildlife habitat, hiking trails, old-growth reserve and scenic beauty. It’s easy to imagine the repurposing of Washington forestlands when one’s income does not derive directly or indirectly from the timber industry.

But it’s also easy to ignore the consequences of such decisions. “If people in cities want forests out in rural areas to be managed differently, they have to understand what the impacts of that change will be for people who live in and near the forests,” Swedeen said. “The solutions need to take into account rural economic development and social wellbeing.”

If, for conservationists, the recent state Supreme Court ruling missed the mark, at least Washington’s progression to multiple-values-based forest management has the potential to benefit all people. Stakeholders from all corners of the state and all sides of the table must convene. “It’s going to take conversation and understanding,” Swedeen said. “The transition needs to be holistic, one that doesn’t increase polarization.” Ultimately, it’s up to all of the Evergreen State to decide which values shall rule the forests.