Lewis County commissioners flipped the bird at the Department of Natural Resources on Friday morning — not their actual middle fingers, but the bird that’s come to represent the ongoing fight for Washington’s timber.
Whether one of government overreach or conservation, or both, residents of Lewis County and neighboring timber giant Skamania County know the Northern spotted owl is more than a creature, but a symbol.
That’s undoubtedly why Lewis County Commissioner Lindsey Pollock brought it up during a conversation on Friday morning with county mayors on the Department of Natural Resources’ proposed forest carbon credit project.
“In addition to the land that we already have set aside for endangered species such as spotted owl, marbled murrelet, we would now have additional acreage taken out of harvest and be unable to be logged,” Pollock said. “Our citizens that are normally engaged in the logging trade would have to drive outside of the area in order to get to areas to log.”
The project would sequester 10,000 acres of Washington forest land into a trust, offering the chance for companies and individuals to pay into it in order to offset carbon emissions, according to the department’s webpage. There, it states the first of the two-phase project would impact Whatcom, Thurston, King and Grays Harbor counties.
While the project is currently in the State Environmental Policy Act phase and is open for written public comment, Lewis County commissioners on Thursday sent out a news release encouraging county residents to submit opinions.
Pollock said Friday the “scheme” would allow trees in the designated acres to grow to be up to 80 years old and therefore, when they’re ready to be logged, lumber mills in Lewis County won’t have the facilities to support them, taking business away from the area. Most mills are set up for trees harvested after 40 years.
“It's exactly that. It's a scheme,” said Commissioner Sean Swope. “We're going to lose more acreage that we won't be able to have. People will lose jobs. We are a timber county. One of our biggest employers is Weyerhaeuser because we have so much timber. This is something that is meant to penalize rural counties and then to pay for the big cities’ (carbon emissions).”
Per the news release, timber harvested and sold from the affected land is a major revenue source for schools, fire districts and other taxing districts, including the county. Treasurer Arny Davis stated in the release that the program was being fast-tracked without consideration for communities affected. The department specifies on its website many of the stands to be affected by this policy are “slated for imminent harvest.”
To read more about the project, visit https://www.dnr.wa.gov/CarbonProject. Written public comment is being solicited through Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 5 p.m. To submit testimony, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7YMQ6CH.
