The League of Women Voters of Snohomish County is asking our Snohomish County Council to ask the Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) to defer all timber sales of structurally complex carbon-dense mature forests until the DNR’s
Carbon and Forest Management Group can provide their recommendations for forest management policy changes in Q2 2025.
The public spoke and the courts have confirmed – mature forests must be preserved. Court cases in
2022 and
2024 confirm that the DNR “…does not have unbridled discretion to ignore its climate related duties under (the) State Environmental Protection Act for timber sales.” The court said, “DNR cannot circumvent an examination of the
impacts of logging on a specific parcel of land by relying on carbon sequestration benefits from other lands that it manages.” And “by failing to consider the impacts of deforestation and forest degradation on climate, DNR’s determination that the Wishbone Timber Sale would have no significant environmental impacts was ‘clearly erroneous.’” These cases and strong public pressure to preserve mature forests led the Board of Natural Resources to take six mature forests off the list for auction at its last meeting.
You can review the slides
from the April 18 update to LWVSC
here. And Join us to strategize on further protection of mature forests on the second Tuesday of the month at 10:00 A.M for an hour. See the
calendar for the link.