PORT ANGELES – For some people, the auctioning of a timber parcel might seem like the end of the road: no refunds, no returns, no exchanges.
Not so for local environmental activists, however, whose cries to save the trees echo well past a parcel’s sale.
Over the past few years, activists have mounted increasing campaigns, hoping to protect “legacy forests” through letter writing, public testimony, appeals to political leaders and more.
If their efforts are not successful and those mature, structurally complex forest stands are auctioned off, the activists usually don’t give up. Instead, they switch tactics — filing lawsuits, raising environmental concerns about the sales, informing the public and undertaking civil disobedience to protect what they view as an increasingly limited resource.
“It’s important to have a multifaceted campaign,” Elizabeth Dunne, director of legal advocacy with the Earth Law Center (ELC), said. “Any particular piece isn’t going to save that particular forest.”
Efforts to protect these priority plots will continue until there are no trees left to advocate for, she said.
“It’s really never too late, as long as there’s part of the forest you want to protect that’s still standing,” Dunne added.
Legal advocacy
Often, the first step an environmental group will take to try to cancel or delay the sale is to file a lawsuit, typically alleging that the DNR hasn’t fulfilled its obligations under the Habitat Conservation Plan, which advises the DNR to set aside 10 percent to 15 percent of the state’s land as older forests by the end of the century.
The ELC, with co-plaintiffs Center for Whale Research and Orca Network, has filed lawsuits on two timber sales within the Clallam County Elwha Watershed. Both sales were auctioned last December.
The Legacy Forest Defense Coalition (LFDC) is appealing those same sales, as well as an additional one in Clallam County and two in Jefferson County.
The Last Crocker sale is the only one where litigation has been processed beyond the initial filing, according to LFDC Program Director Joshua Wright.
In December, the organization won an injunction against the DNR to prevent the units in question from being logged. However, many times environmentalists’ requests are not granted by the court.
This can create a situation “where the case can’t even be heard before the forest is logged, and once the forest is logged …the court said the case is now moot,” Dunne said.
When the pauses are granted, timber revenue that would go to local counties and junior taxing districts will also be paused. This impacts the junior taxing districts as well as the downstream economy, direct and induced jobs and bidder’s perceptions about the dependability of logging locally, according to Connie Beauvais, chair of the Clallam County Revenue Advisory Committee.
Education campaigns
Lawsuits, however, take their time to work through the court system. So, while they are waiting, activists often focus on building broad community support through public events, letter writing campaigns, educational hikes and more.
Last week, the Elwha Legacy Forests Coalition (ELFC) held a series of events honoring their place in the ecosystem, in celebration of World Water Day.
Local Indigenous groups have also begun asking for protection of these parcels, chiefly due to their cultural importance. Many Indigenous individuals frequently gather cedar bark, berries, medicinal plants, fallen wood and more for use in cultural practices.
“There’s so many things that I’m realizing tribal communities get from these forests,” Tashena Francis, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, said.
For both the Indigenous groups and the other activists, the end goal of these advocacy efforts is to turn up the heat and pressure the DNR into granting more protection, local activist Peter Stedman said.
“This educational thing has to culminate in action,” he added.
Currently, the ELFC is gathering signatures in support of several timber plots located within the Elwha Watershed that were auctioned off at the end of last year. The petition has over 2,500 signatures, according to Dunne.
Finding rare plants
Another strategy environmental groups employ is searching for rare plant communities that may prohibit the DNR from harvesting in that area.
Under the DNR’s policy for sustainable forests and the sustainable forestry initiative, Wright said the DNR is obligated to protect elemental occurrences of certain rare plant communities. When one of these plant communities is proposed to exist, the DNR’s Natural Heritage Program will evaluate the claim and either confirm or reject it. However, Wright said a lack of sufficient funding usually means the Natural Heritage Program doesn’t evaluate a parcel unless there is clear evidence a rare plant community may exist there.
“The agency itself should be looking for these rare plant communities,” Wright said. “They can’t commit on one hand to protect them … and then keep accidentally logging these rare plant communities.”
This is where environmental groups, such as the LFDC, step in. Knowledgeable individuals will survey the forests and submit their findings to the DNR for verification. If their findings are correct, that plant community and surrounding areas are obligatorily protected.
Rare plant communities consist of a coalition of plants that on their own are not rare, but by association, they form a rare ecosystem, according to Wright. These communities form unique habitats where lesser-known species might thrive.
Currently, the Natural Heritage Program is evaluating Wright’s claim that a globally rare plant community – the “grand fir western red cedar sword fern forest” association – exists in the Dungeness and Dragons plot. This sale has 69 harvestable acres and is located about 4 miles southwest of Sequim, near Lost Mountain Road and Cassidy Road.
The alleged rare plant community covers about 10 to 15 acres of the 23 acres in Unit 3, Wright said. If the DNR agrees with him, it will have to exclude either that plant community or the whole unit from the timber sale, and find alternative timber to replace the portion that was sectioned off.
The DNR declined to comment on this matter, given that the sale is under pending litigation.
A significant number of rare plant communities tend to exist in lowland naturally regenerated legacy forests, Wright said, noting that he’s found a number of potential rare plant communities in both Clallam and Jefferson Counties.
“Most of lowland natural forests are either protected land, or on DNR managed land, so DNR managed lands contain a significant amount of remaining native lowland forests,” Wright said. “That kind of speaks to the importance of maintaining these older forests in the lowland.”
Other parcels where rare plant communities have been found include TCB23, Alley Cat and Power Station. Tiger Stripes, which is currently going through the DNR’s SEPA process, might also have a rare plant community, according to Wright.
Hope around new commissioner
Many activists are also holding out hope that the newly-elected public lands commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, will take action to protect legacy forests.
During his first day in office, Upthegrove announced a six-month pause on sales of “certain structurally complex mature forests.”
“We appreciate Commissioner Upthegrove following through with his campaign promise,” Dunne said. “DNR’s obligations under the law is not to log these legacy forests.”
This pause affected eight sales in Clallam County, but none in Jefferson County. However, it does not extend to parcels that have already been approved by the BNR — meaning activists are going to continue to fight for the forests that have already been auctioned.
In February, Upthegrove told the Clallam County Revenue Advisory Committee (RAC) he would legally stand by any sales that had been approved by the BNR before he came into office.
During the six-month pause, Upthegrove said his office would prioritize using methodology and technology to get a better picture of the DNR’s current forest inventory. However, he told the RAC that, once the review was complete, he was not planning on permanently reserving any more timber from harvest.
“If you take away one thing today, it is this,” he said. “None of the proposals I’m considering bringing to the Board of Natural Resources involve taking land and setting it aside outside of harvestable timber.”
Instead, his focus is to examine and potentially modify the harvest schedule and the sequence of harvesting, address litigation and have consistency and predictability within forest management.
“My hope and my vision is to get us to a place very soon where we are achieving our sustainable harvest calculation targets, minimizing litigation and maintaining land in a way that will be sustainably harvested in this trust moving forward,” he said.
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
