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John,

Have you heard the news?

The Commissioner of Public Lands, Hilary Franz, just announced a 10,000-acre carbon offset project on the state’s public forestlands, managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR). This project will conserve forests in several western Washington counties to focus on sequestering carbon. Rather than generating revenue through logging, it will do so through the sale of carbon offsets.

This is encouraging news! For years, WEC has been advocating DNR to center carbon sequestration and climate change in management of state trust forestlands. We view this first-of-its kind project on Washington’s state trust lands as a signal that DNR is willing to think creatively about managing our public forests for climate change.

However, there is more to learn about this new project as information is made public— including the specific areas are included, project methodology, and how DNR will engage interested stakeholders. These details will be critical to understand the project’s impact and whether it is responsive to the concerns of the public regarding logging of older forests. It is also important to keep the bigger picture in view: this 10,000 acre project accounts for 0.5% of the 2.1 million acres of forests managed by DNR. We see a significant opportunity for DNR to position this project as a first step towards broader management for climate change mitigation and adaptation across state trust lands.

“This project demonstrates that it is both possible and necessary to manage state forestlands for multiple benefits. At this point in the climate crisis, we need to see significant progress. We welcome DNR responding to this moment by taking a first step towards centering the climate crisis on state lands, and we hope to see the agency apply complementary climate-smart forest management strategies across the landscape,” said Alyssa Macy, CEO of Washington Environmental Council & Washington Conservation Voters, “We look forward to learning more about the project and its implementation, including addressing environmental justice aspects and partnership with Tribal Nations.”

Onward,

Rachel Baker (she/her)

Forest Program Director

*Read the story in the Seattle Times here. [[link removed]]

BACKGROUND:

Meeting the urgency of the climate crisis requires modernizing management practices on all the acres DNR stewards, and utilizing climate-smart management strategies on the lands where timber harvest will continue. Carbon projects are one tool in the climate-smart forestry toolbox, and are a solution for lands of high conservation value that may be incompatible with commercial logging. For the rest of the landscape, we need strategies to sequester more carbon and provide ecological and social benefits while harvesting timber in a different way. For example, growing trees older before harvest, cultivating a diversity of tree species and ages to increase biodiversity and climate resilience, and implementing harvest practices that enhance soil and forest carbon. We'll continue to advocate for these practices on our public lands to ensure these forests are healthy for generations to come.

In 2019, WEC and our partners brought a formal request [[link removed]] to the Board of Natural Resources--which sets policies for DNR-- to develop a carbon and climate policy to inform DNR’s management of state forestlands in the time of the climate crisis. The agency’s policy guiding forest management was published in 2006, and makes no substantive mention of carbon or climate change. We know that what happens in the forest begins with the Board, and we believe this update to outdated [[link removed]]policy is more important now than ever. A formal carbon and climate policy would provide direction for how carbon projects like this one, and the other climate-smart forest practices we’re looking for, are implemented on state-managed lands.

As we’ve shared with you before, Washington Environmental Council is currently party to a lawsuit being considered by the Washington State Supreme Court [[link removed]], which asks the court to confirm that DNR must manage state trust lands for the benefit of all the people of Washington to provide a diversity of values—environmental, economic, and social—instead of prioritizing generating revenue from timber sales above all else. Forest management in the best interests of the public undoubtedly includes strategies to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. We expect a decision from the State Supreme Court any day now.

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