The state Department of Natural Resources plans a milestone harvest of more than 100 million board feet of timber on the Olympic Peninsula – including Clallam and Jefferson counties – during the next fiscal year, beginning in July.
“Heck, we haven’t cut 100 million board feet since 1988, and that was the year the spotted owl was listed,” said Al Vaughan, assistant regional manager for DNR’s Olympic region.
The plans are for selling between 110 million and 115 million board feet from state forest lands in Clallam, Jefferson, Gray’s Harbor and part of Mason counties.
The state lands cover 100,000 acres in Clallam County and 25,000 acres in Jefferson county.
In Clallam County, an estimated 62.2 million board feet could be sold, worth about $13.6 million.
In Jefferson County, an estimated 46.4 million board-feet could be sold, worth about $10 million.
The final amount depends on whether DNR can prepare the sales on schedule, Vaughan said.
Increased harvests could mean more jobs and more money for Clallam and Jefferson county coffers.
But those in the timber industry say they are taking a wait-and-see attitude.
“I don’t think folks want to get too excited yet, because we don’t know what will happen,” said Rod Fleck, attorney for the city of Forks, which gave input into DNR’s timber harvest calculations.
Some timber harvests may be close to homes that have been built on the Olympic mountain foothills, Vaughan said, but residents within one-fourth mile of a timber sale would be notified in advance.
New sustainable harvesting calculations have made it possible to harvest the wood, which is enough to frame more than 33,000 small homes.
The projection is more than a 33 percent increase over logging in recent years, when harvests hovered around 75 million board feet annually, said Vaughan.
“It took time for us to understand the social and political implications that we have to manage along with the actual forest,” he said.
“It took awhile for all sides to agree what sustainability is.”
The spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in June 1990.
State harvests dropped after the owl was listed, then slowly recovered through the 1990s as the agency proposed, implemented and changed ways to protect the spotted owl’s habitat.
With the new sustainable harvesting guidelines, Vaughan expects the buoyed level to stay above 100 million board feet through 2014.
