Region’s green blanket is fast disappearing

By editorial
Tacoma News Tribune April 03, 2007
When battles over spotted owls and old-growth timber roiled the Northwest two decades ago, timber companies and federal forest managers were the enemy.

Today, Washington is losing forests faster than ever – and the enemy is us. No judge would halt logging on grounds that homo sapiens is an endangered species here.

As The News Tribune’s Susan Gordon reported Sunday, we’re losing prime, lowland forests to development at an accelerating and alarming rate. As much as 300,000 acres of commercial timberland may be lost in the next three to five years.

As more people crowd into the region surrounding Puget Sound, the region’s nearest forests are becoming more valuable as real estate than as timberland. Startlingly, the Weyerhaeuser Co., the state’s largest timber company, no longer owns active timberland in the Puget Sound region.

Growth plays a key role, but other market forces are at work, too. Forests elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad provide cheaper timber, less expensive labor and less regulation.

But growth is the main reason the “footprint” of development is spreading widely toward the Cascades. We can’t stop population growth, and we can’t radically alter the global economics of the timber industry. But we can do much more to stem the erosion of the forest landscape that defines our state.

There are practical reasons to do this as well. Forests help protect water quality, reduce flooding and absorb the carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change. Within a decade or so, carbon taxes may endow forests with an economic value they now lack.

In the meantime, state and local governments should continue stepped-up efforts to save forests with conservation easements and land acquistions – such as the 462 acres of timberland near Mount Rainier National Park purchased with Pierce County Conservation Futures funding.

The Cascade Land Conservancy, which developed a “Cascade Agenda” aimed at preserving our long-term quality of life, accurately maintains that new tools and new cooperation between government, business and landowners are needed.

Examples include two bills moving through the Legislature.

House Bill 1636 would create a regional marketplace allowing the transfer of development rights; in return for greater urban density, more farmland and forest could be saved. Senate Bill 5883 addresses the property rights of family tree farmers and makes it more likely they will keep their forests in productive use.

Measures such as Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget proposal to spend $4 million to acquire or lease development rights to family-owned forest land would help.

It’s easy to imagine that growth in the coming decades will outstrip our collective efforts to save sustainable forestry. But if we don’t work at it, we’ll lose even more – and that would be a shame.