No matter the outcome of the election, we have the power to build partnerships in our county to preserve carbon-dense, structurally complex older forests.
There is significant progress building alliances with county elected officials. Snohomish County councilmember Megan Dunn wrote an
op/ed on Oct. 25th with six other county officials calling on DNR to find alternatives to “aggressive logging of mature forests on trust lands in our counties.” In June, the council sent a
letter to the Dept. of Natural Resources requesting information about our forests on public lands. DNR visited the council in September but did not provide the information requested.
The tools we need are funded by the Climate Commitment Act Natural Climate Solutions, if it survived, Trust Land Transfers, carbon credits, and grants. Why not also create community forests in our county that would allow the purchase of commercial forest lands to manage sustainably? Timber could supply the
Wood Innovation Center in Darrington. That would give us leverage to require the WIC to become a
certified source of cross-laminated timber produced sustainably.
Please consider joining LWVWA for a one-hour webinar Thursday, November 21 at 7:00 P.M.,
Your Power at County Governments: How to help guide county policy around forest management. We’ll talk about strategies and experience in Thurston and Snohomish Counties. LWV members Vanessa LaValle and Kate Lunceford, and Executive Director of Center for Responsible Forestry Brel Froebe will lead the discussion.
Our partnership with the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition and the Sno-Isle Sierra Club blossomed into a walking trip to explore a legacy forest in October. A group wandered above a vulnerable mature forest just outside Darrington, between the Sauk River and Squire Creek. DNR’s Next Regeneration timber sale threatens to clearcut over 86 acres of forest. Unlike industrial tree plantations, much of this forest is structurally complex and retains the biodiversity of natural forests once dominant in the Pacific Northwest. We called on the public in October to write to the Board of Natural Resources to strongly oppose fast-tracking more than 1,400 acres of timber sales that contain mature forests.
Join our advocacy on the
second Tuesday of the month. Log in to find the Zoom link.