ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove is making good on a campaign promise to conserve thousands of acres of older forests in Washington dubbed legacy forests.

The state Department of Natural Resources, with Upthegrove at the helm, announced Tuesday it would conserve 77,000 acres of these structurally complex forests.

The state defines these structurally complex forests as those with gaps in the canopy, diverse species growing below and a relatively low presence of large fallen logs or snags. Mostly it is time that allows for this diversity and growth. These are forests generally harvested in the last century between the 1920s and post-World War II.

They are very close to fully mature forests with increased biodiversity.

This is the kind of forest we want future generations to inherit," Upthegrove said of the surrounding forest on Tiger Mountain during a Tuesday news conference.

These forests are vital to sequestering and storing carbon, supporting critical habitat and providing the biodiversity essential to maintaining both ecological and economic sustainability, Upthegrove said, noting the impacts of climate change are here.

"To meet this moment of change and challenge, we must evolve again," he said before signing a Commissioner's Order that set aside the forests.

These forests will no longer be in the state’s traditional logging rotation. Instead, the state said it would go to the Legislature for permission to enter carbon markets and look to new ways of managing the lands.

The state is hoping to open up the forests to be managed in a different way, for example, selling credits for the carbon these forests sequester as well as “avoided wildfire emissions,” and different types of forestry. The state said it could also provide supply for mass timber and seek to get the most money for sustainable-certified products.

On his first day in office, Upthegrove announced a temporary pause on some timber sales.

Foresters, data scientists and forest ecologists developed an updated inventory of forest types across state lands, according to DNR. That model identified 106,000 acres of structurally complex and older forests.

The conserved forests are primarily along parts of the Olympic Peninsula and the west slopes of the Cascade foothills.

They were identified using a new tool, and prior evaluations, like timber sales and old-growth forest assessments. DNR says its staff did 2,000 field visits to confirm the model’s results.

The remaining 29,000 acres will be available for harvest. That means, according to the state, for the next decade, there won’t be any impact to the state’s timber revenue or its trust beneficiaries like schools and local communities.

"I think we've struck a good balance that's going to do more for climate, more for habitat, while still meeting our responsibilities to schools and local governments," Upthegrove said in an interview.

A third-party review of agency assets in 2021 found DNR should seek to diversify the sources of revenue it provides Washington’s schools and local governments. The agency said this plan can help.

A 2022 state Supreme Court decision affirmed the state's broad discretion to manage state lands to generate benefit for both its trust beneficiaries and the public, and this is the state's first major action to put that in practice, said Washington Conservation Action CEO Alyssa Macy, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

"We've really treated our natural resources as commodities instead of relatives, and we really must shift our thinking," Macy said in an interview, "because without mature trees, without our forests, without clean water, without clean air, we as humans are not going to exist."

Some people will likely feel that there's more to be protected, Macy said, and others may feel it is too much.

Timber industry group American Forest Resource Council's Heath Heikkila, who attended the news conference Tuesday, threw cold water on the decision, which he said puts DNR and its trust beneficiaries at risk financially.

"There's going to be some significant legal questions about the authority to do that," he said of what he sees as the state going above and beyond the requirements of a state and federal agreement that set aside lands for conservation.

Joshua Wright, an outspoken advocate for these mature, structurally complex forests with the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition, said while the plan protects some of the best forests, it also leaves many of the forests he and others have fought to protect on the chopping block.

"What DNR has done with this announcement is they have green-lighted pretty much every previously planned timber sale (in structurally complex forest) for the next five years," Wright said.

"That translates to protecting the smaller bits and the guts and feathers, he said, rather than the larger more-intact areas.

Central in the 2024 race for lands commissioner was Upthegrove’s plan to pause commercial sales of an estimated nearly 80,000 acres of older, structurally complex forests. These are not protected old-growth forests but rather the old growth of tomorrow.

Environmental advocates have been calling for the protection of these second-growth forests since 2021. These forests’ big trees store more carbon than younger trees on short harvest rotations. They also offer critical habitat and help maintain stream flows.

More information is available at dnr.wa.gov/forest-forward-new-direction-our-forests.

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