By Melissa Crowe For Peninsula Daily News
SEQUIM — The economic and environmental impacts of the North Olympic Peninsula’s working forests reach far beyond the region.
Washington’s working forests, which include about 720,089 acres across Clallam and Jefferson counties, make the state the second-largest lumber producer in the nation, representatives of the Washington Forest Protection Association said at the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon Tuesday.
The 47 people who attended got a peek into the value of the industry from the trade group, which represents private forest landowners in Washington state.
The organization supports active, sustainable forestry to promote revenue, taxes, jobs and the production of renewable wood product.
With more than 107,000 forest-related industry jobs paying $4.5 billion in wages in Washington state, working forests are not only good for the economy, they are good for the environment, said Debora Munguia, director of governmental relations for the association.
The group was one of many others involved in creating some of the most protective laws and policies in the world, including the 1999 Forests & Fish Law and the 2006 50-year Habitat Conservation Plan in compliance with the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.
“This isn’t something that happened to us; it happened because of us,” Munguia said.
As one of the largest and most comprehensive pieces of environmental legislation in the U.S., the law is designed to protect Washington’s native fish and aquatic species and assure clean water compliance, according to the forest protection association.
The law protects 60,000 miles of streams running through 9.3 million acres of state and private forestland, Munguia said.
It is also responsible for the restoration of nearly 3,300 miles of fish habitat through the Salmon Recovery Plan, and permanently setting aside 1.7 million acres of forest land for riparian buffers and slopes, Munguia said.
The law and 50-year plan are both collaborative, ongoing processes that have included thousands of hours of meetings and input from federal, state and county governments, environmental and conservation groups, small and large landowners and tribes, said Cindy Mitchell, senior director of public affairs for the association.
“We’ve got to represent everybody’s values that are part of the forest industry,” Mitchell said.
Private landowners have contributed $4 million annually to those efforts and practices.
The intent of the law is to support an active timber industry while protecting public resources, fish, wildlife, water and air quality, she said.
Mitchell called Washington “the wood basket of America.”
The industry is directly tied to the economy and is slowly recovering from the 2006 economic downturn, which saw production dip about 20 percent, according to her presentation.
While other industries go through down cycles, the forests continue growing and the work of planting, harvesting and producing wood products continues, she said.