SEQUIM — U.S. Forest Service officials are trying to round up support locally for a project that would use revenue from timber sales for restoration work on the harvested land, with discussion so far focusing on Olympic National Forest property around the headwaters of the Dungeness River.
“We’re starting from scratch,” said Susan Piper, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service.
“We’re starting with thoughts of what could be done on the ground.”
The approach is known as “stewardship contracting,” which is an alternative to the more traditional methods of selling timber or contracting for services to public lands.
Stewardship is intended to bring together a wide range of people and entities — tribes, local governments, interest groups — to work on restoration projects in a specific area.
Projects can include commercial thinning of timber, decommissioning logging roads, restoring meadows or removing invasive plants — items that are on the Forest Service’s to-do list but for which little or no funding is available.