PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles Business Association has joined the chorus of those opposed to a loss of harvestable forests on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Association President Kaj Ahlburg presented Clallam County commissioners with a letter Tuesday urging the county to revise its support for the expansion of Olympic National Park by supporting the concept of “no net loss of working forests.”
For each acre of land reclassified as wilderness, the business association requests the transfer of one acre of Forest Service land into a county-managed trust.
It also calls for the identification of sufficient forestland for exchanges with private landowners to accomplish park expansion.
Two weeks ago, Clallam County Republican Party Chairman Dick Pilling presented county commissioners with a resolution urging them to rescind their support of the Wild Olympics Campaign.
Wild Olympics
Wild Olympics is a coalition of environmental groups that has proposed designating 134,000 acres of Olympic National Forest as wilderness, adding 37,000 acres of state trust lands and private timber company land to Olympic National Park as a wilderness area if the owners agree to sell.
Much of the land is in the West End of Clallam County.
County commissioners signed a letter supporting the Wild Olympics Campaign — with a stipulation that there has to be a willing seller — in February 2010.
“We believe that this is a proposal in the spirit of the request Commissioner [Mike] Chapman made a couple of weeks ago to find common ground, to come up with a compromise solution that works for everybody in this county,” Ahlburg said after reading his letter.
“We would like you to take this in no way as criticism of your past position but as an expression of public support for your effort to convince our federal congressional delegation to come up with a plan that does not result in the loss of private jobs or taxpayer revenues, which the county can ill afford at this time.”
Path Forward
Opponents of the Wild Olympics Campaign have said the Path Forward on Olympic Watersheds Protection proposal supported by U.S. Rep Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, of the 6th Congressional District — which includes the North Olympic Peninsula — and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Bothell, is essentially the same program.
The Port Angeles Business Association, or PABA, has invited speakers from the U.S. Forest Service, the Campaign for America’s Wilderness and the North Olympic Timber Action Committee to inform its membership about proposals for wilderness expansions, Ahlburg said.
Ahlburg cited a Port of Port Angeles economic impact study that estimated Wild Olympics would cost $3.7 million in lost wages and 72 jobs.
Commissioner Steve Tharinger, who is also a state representative, said the 24th District delegation is “looking for better management of the Olympic forests.”
“We’re sort of trying to stay at the table and have those discussions,” he said.
Commissioner Mike Doherty said timber counties like Clallam have urged the state Department of Natural Resources to ramp up its forest thinning.
“The Legislature tends to postpone funding that item,” he said.
Chapman said positions on wilderness expansion are evolving as more information becomes available.
“Sounds like there’s a consensus kind of coalescing around a plan that might work,” he said.
“That’s encouraging.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.