16 minute read
Washington's Community Forests: Managing Trees While Serving Local Values
Forests for Good
Community forests in Washington preserve the woods while serving local values and needs
written and photographed by Daniel O’Neil
Forests have a natural tendency to unify the diverse. Plants and trees, mammals and birds, and humans from all walks of life can call the same forest home. Rather than just a bunch of trees, a forest is an ecosystem, a web of life. By providing wildlife habitat, wood products, drinking water, carbon sequestration, recreation, a good dose of serenity and plenty more, forests offer innumerable benefits to all involved, especially when managed by and for the common good.
Second only to Oregon, Washington is one of the country’s main providers of forest products. Essential for the state’s economy and for the nation’s growth, timber must be cut. But when the value of Washington’s forests is only measured in board feet and in dollars, the forest’s other range of values diminishes, and its ability to cultivate community unravels.
Enter Washington’s community forests. Owned and stewarded by and for the local community, the community forest model manages a forest’s many values so that ecosystem health, jobs and logs, access and recreation opportunities can all coexist. The forest stays whole, and all of its communities find what they need in the dominant feature of the Evergreen State.
At 95,000 acres, community forestry in Washington looks like a sapling compared to other forestland ownership in the state. But with twenty-three community forests now established, and the purpose, unity and momentum gathering behind this movement, community forestry here has the potential to grow tall and resolute like a legacy cedar.
The community forest model provides an opportunity for a community to purchase private timberland and develop a management plan that suits its particular, localized needs and values. Some are owned by a county or city, others by nonprofits or land trusts. All call their own shots, for the longterm economic, ecological and social good of the greater community.
“There’s no one set of benefits that each community forest aims to achieve,” said Daniel Wear, forest program manager for Sustainable Northwest, a conservation nonprofit that also leads the Northwest Community Forest Coalition. “The common thread is that it’s a diffuse decision-making and management process that engages multiple perspectives.”
In the Pacific Northwest and nationwide, Washington is proving itself a leader in community forestry. Since 2020, the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office has a Community Forests Program that has already awarded $22 million to nine different community forest projects, and fourteen more projects have requested grant funding for the upcoming cycle. Results are already tangible. Without RCO funding, Chimacum Ridge Community Forest might not exist.
Plans to clearcut and develop Chimacum Ridge, near Port Townsend, incited local residents to find a way to protect the forest while still providing timber for local artisans and mills. “People who know this place, who live here, work here and do this conservation work locally, immediately identified community forestry as the way we wanted to see this place managed in perpetuity,” said Erik Kingfisher, director of stewardship and resilience for Jefferson Land Trust. “And part of that is weaving in the community to help take care of the place, building that into the culture.”
Chimacum Ridge Community Forest has yet to officially open, but volunteer community members have organized to govern and manage the 853-acre community forest, and a suite of community-led advisory groups helps provide guidance.
In Whatcom County, the newly acquired Stewart Mountain Community Forest is also setting up a management plan that extends far beyond short-term goals. Close collaboration with the Nooksack Tribe expands the dimension and definition of community here, with a particular focus on salmon recovery.
“One of the wonderful components of a community forest is having the time and space to develop that long-term vision,” said Claire Johnston, communications director for Whatcom Land Trust. “In this day and age, having sustainable, locally driven solutions is such a great opportunity to address the needs of our communities. It’s going to impact people’s day-to-day lives, as well as benefit future generations.”
In this day and age, having sustainable, locally driven solutions is such a great opportunity to address the needs of our communities. It’s going to impact people’s day-to-day lives, as well as benefit future generations.
The Pacific Northwest’s first community forest, one of the earliest in the country, dates back to 1931. Montesano City Forest, 40 miles west of Olympia, formed when the city’s water department purchased 5,000 acres of previously cut woods just north of Montesano, traditionally a logging town. Today, like in all community forests, multiple uses overlap. With nearly 20 miles of hiking and mountain biking trails, and room for berry pickers, equestrians, birdwatchers and hunters to roam, recreational access is highly valued. But forestry still holds sway.
Montesano manages its 5,600-acre forest according to a sustainable yield that grows trees for about fifty-five years before clearcutting and replanting approximately 85 acres a year. “We could cut that forever and never run out of trees,” said city forester John Bull. Montesano City Forest guarantees $1 million annually to the city, steady work for local forestry professionals and mills, and continued public access.
One-fifth of Montesano’s forest will never be cut because it lies in riparian wetlands protected by state law or in setaside zones. “There are some areas that we could probably harvest, like extremely steep slopes, but we’re choosing not to,” Bull said. “We don’t want to open Pandora’s box. We have enough acres that we don’t need to push areas that are potentially unstable.”
In terms of timber harvest, Montesano is Washington’s most productive community forest. But Montesano grows its trees for several decades longer than most investor-owned forestlands and is acquiring more acreage to extend that rotation. Longer rotations degrade the land less, sequester more carbon and, in greater contrast to industrial ownership, they form part of a long-term stewardship plan.
As investment timber operations buy, cut and sell land at a 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.
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 capital—natural assets and human capital—in an area where many resources have been exported and effectively drained from our community. The goal is that people feel a sense of ownership and pride, empowered through their connection to these forests.”
Mount Adams Community Forest, for us, is one part conservation, one part economic development and one part community building. The community forest has the power to maintain capital— natural assets and human capital—in an area where many resources have been exported and effectively drained from our community. The goal is that people feel a sense of ownership and pride, empowered through their connection to these forests.”
By creating local jobs, inviting the community back onto the land and restoring health to forests that had been intensively managed for decades, the Mount Adams Community Forest provides a vision of rural stability and place-based unity. Getting local residents back into their local woods is a pillar of community forestry. Beyond economic opportunities, the benefits extend to wellness and education.
Twenty miles north of Leavenworth, the Nason Ridge Community Forest gathers these attributes and more across its 3,714 acres above Lake Wenatchee. In 2017, a proposed timber sale and likely development worried citizens enough to start a grassroots campaign to protect Nason Ridge. With help from Chelan County, nonprofits and a willing seller, the community forest was established in 2022.
Having been intensively logged over the past century, the trees here will now be left to grow a while before revenue-based logging resumes. Ongoing thinning projects will create an older, more complex forest structure, prescribed burns will reduce fuels, and all of this creates local jobs and awareness. “It’s a great example for the public to see what responsible forest management can look like, but then also see a healthy forest emerge,” said Erin McKay, senior natural resource and recreation specialist for Chelan County.
Maintaining access is also important for recreation, another draw at Nason Ridge. In summer, Forest Service hiking trails lead through the community forest to dramatic views, and in winter groomed cross-country ski trails weave through from Wenatchee State Park. Hunters and horseback riders are also welcome. But Chelan County is careful not to overdevelop recreational opportunities and overstress the local community and infrastructure.
“We’re constantly working toward compromises, trying to strike a balance between all of the different objectives, like between recreation access and wildlife protection, or active forest management and recreation,” McKay said. “It can be challenging, so we just come back to our management plan and make sure that we’re balancing out the objectives for the community.”
Salmon, it has been said, are a forest species. Born and raised in forest streams, they return from the Pacific Ocean to their natal waters to spawn the next generation. Washington has the ability to grow evergreens and salmon in abundance, but salmon face a litany of impacts today, and industrial forestry is one of them. Community forestry finds a natural niche in protecting and restoring crucial wild salmon and steelhead habitat throughout the state.
Nason Creek, which flows through the Nason Ridge Community Forest, is home to spring chinook salmon and steelhead trout listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. To enhance habitat for those fish, the community forest has created an expanded riparian reserve along the creek’s floodplain and ongoing targeted restoration projects that will key into cold water inputs.
On the Stewart Mountain Community Forest, Whatcom Land Trust is partnering with the Nooksack Tribe on a conservation plan for ESA-listed chinook salmon and bull trout in the South Fork Nooksack River watershed. Today, the community forest protects 530 acres of highly sensitive salmon-bearing habitat, and its goal is to acquire another 5,500 acres from industrial timberland owners.
These two community forests follow the example of the Nisqually Community Forest, east of Olympia, which manages its 5,500 acres to provide timber revenue for the local community and also to safeguard critical habitat for ESA-listed steelhead trout and chinook salmon.
The Nisqually River watershed lies in the middle of a vast industrial timber zone. With anadromous fish populations nearing extinction, export timber harvests reaching new highs, steady ownership turnover and loss of access to the woods, local stakeholders convened in 2010. Together, they strategized a Nisqually Community Forest that would protect fish and wildlife habitat, restore access and manage the forest ecologically while also creating local timber industry jobs.
As the first to argue that community forestry proved the best approach to salmon and steelhead recovery, because it intended to acquire large, contiguous, steep tracts of forestland in the upper watershed, the Nisqually Community Forest proposal won initial funding in 2014. Today, it covers 5,500 acres, and the long-term goal is to purchase another 15,000 acres of neighboring industrial timberland.
To benefit steelhead and salmon, the community forest management plan includes commercial thinning in areas far from fish habitat, but also growing a more mature forest to increase stream flows for fish in summer. “The goal for the forest as a whole is to set it on an old-growth trajectory, as opposed to standard industrial management,” said Joe Kane, general manager of the Nisqually Community Forest. “All of these forests have been managed for over a century, and we’re changing management on them.”
Kane also envisions changing the definition of forestland ownership and profit. “What if you measured profit as the number of jobs you created, as opposed to the return in dollars to an investor in Paris? What if you measured it in fish in the streams, or in how many kids get out in the forest every year? So, kind of a thought experiment, but it’s a way of thinking about a different kind of timber company, a nonprofit timber company.”
The Nisqually Community Forest was in fact incorporated as a nonprofit so that it can engage in timber production for revenue rather than rely on donations. But Kane points out that the Nisqually Community Forest pays the same property and harvest taxes as large industrial timber companies. And rather than export its logs for greater profit, like most industrial operations, the Nisqually Community Forest sends its timber to local mills. “The money stays home. It doesn’t go out of the state, doesn’t get shipped around the world. It stays right here.”
What if you measured profit as the number of jobs you created, as opposed to the return in dollars to an investor in Paris? What if you measured it in fish in the streams, or in how many kids get out in the forest every year? So, kind of a thought experiment, but it’s a way of thinking about a different kind of timber company, a nonprofit timber company.”
Washington's tribal nations have maintained a community here for thousands of years. Their cultures developed with the forests. Tribal involvement brings many benefits to community forestry, including traditional ecological knowledge, a very long-term view and a true, complete sense of community.
The Nisqually Indian Tribe has been involved in the Nisqually Community Forest from the beginning. As the state-recognized lead entity for salmon and steelhead recovery in the watershed, the tribe’s inclusion is essential. Over the last two years, the tribe has demonstrated the depth of its commitment by purchasing 2,700 acres of forestland to double the size of the community forest.
While other community forests in Washington also work closely with local tribes, the Indian Creek Community Forest, 60 miles north of Spokane, provides the model for tribal community forestry. As one of only two tribe-owned and -managed community forests in the nation, Indian Creek focuses on Kalispel Tribe interests while also engaging the surrounding community as a whole.
Purchased in 2012 from a private landowner who envisioned development, the Kalispel Tribe implemented its community-developed action plan in 2019. The community forest covers 410 acres, but tribal management extends across another 800 acres of fish and wildlife habitat. Prior to acquisition, the community forest area had been heavily cut, so the tribe is letting it recover rather than harvest trees. An on-site native plant nursery, fish hatchery and fishing pond provide a new direction for the land. But education, traditional culture and community form the backbone here.
Indian Creek Community Forest hosts several education initiatives. Some involve forest management, and others work with children from the Kalispel Reservation. The Kalispel Language Survival School makes use of community forest classrooms to teach primary school students tribal names for different plants and animals. Children also learn archery and fishing skills here, which can one day provide both subsistence and a cultural connection with the land.
“The primary function of the landscape that the community forest is part of is to develop additional opportunities of access to tribal membership for hunting, fishing and gathering,” said Ray Entz, director of wildlife and terrestrial resources for the Kalispel Tribe. “The reservation is small, and being small it provides a minimal opportunity for tribal members to access these resources. So our Fish and Wildlife Land Conservation Program really focuses on adding more to the tribe’s ownership that avails to tribal members these resources, from camas to deer and elk.”
The Kalispel Tribe looks after its own while also inviting others in. Festivals, stargazing parties and BioBlitzes welcome non-tribal neighbors to enjoy what community forests do best. “One piece that’s super important to the tribe is developing that community engagement and involvement around collaborative and cooperative relationships,” Entz said. “Indian Creek Community Forest provides a place and a concept for that. And it’s bigger than just the tribe. It’s part of a broader community.”
