rapid clip, local communities lose economic stability and even access to the woods. The majority of Washington’s community forests have emerged from industrial timberland as communities endeavor to regain some control over their local forests. Often, a community will learn of a forest parcel that locals recognize as particularly significant but is slated for liquidation and possibly for development, and citizens will organize to bring that land under community forest ownership. In response, some large private timberland owners have worked with community forest interests, and a mutual respect has evolved.
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FROM LEFT Forester and Mount Adams Resource Stewards founder Jay McLaughlin inspects a load of merchantable logs from a parcel affected by root rot and dwarf mistletoe. Previous industrial ownership opened up dramatic views of Mount Adams on some parcels of today’s Mount Adams Community Forest.
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Since its inception in 2011, the Mount Adams Community Forest has grown parcel by parcel, much of it through acquisition from timber companies. It was Washington’s first nonprofit-owned working forest, and it continues to expand. Forest management here focuses on thinning operations and, importantly in this arid stretch of Klickitat County, fire resiliency through prescribed burns. But the benefits and uses are as diverse as the community’s interests. Jay McLaughlin founded Mount Adams Resource Stewards, the nonprofit that owns the 1,800-acre community forest, in 2004. “While
nonprofits are private organizations, the mission is one of public and community benefit,” he said. The local community was not benefitting from the high turnover of forestland as ownership drifted away to corporations and investment entities on the East Coast and beyond. McLaughlin believed a community forest could act as an anchor institution for the community, like a school or grange hall. “Mount Adams Community Forest, for us, is one part conservation, one part economic development and one part community building,” he said. “The community forest has the power to maintain
