In his recent Soapbox opinion, John Talberth calls for ending all timber harvests on Washington’s state trust lands and proposes replacing this revenue with a new tax on forest landowners, new fees on recreation, and selling speculative carbon offsets to investors and multinational corporations.
This argument fundamentally misunderstands how Washington’s forest sector works and what’s at stake if we abandon sustainable forest management in the Evergreen State.
Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages more than 2 million acres of forested state trust lands to generate non-tax revenue for public schools, libraries, fire departments, and other essential community services.
These lands are managed by agency professionals and scientists under some of the most rigorous environmental standards in the world. State trust lands provide multiple benefits beyond timber—clean water, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, and recreation.
These benefits are at risk, as forests are under increasing stress from insects, disease, drought, and wildfires. Forest mortality in the Pacific Northwest has increased by more than 50% since the 1970s, largely due to wildfire suppression combined with reduced vegetation management on federal lands.
As more forests become choked with overgrowth and dead trees, mortality has outpaced growth on U.S. national forests since 2016. These forests are not carbon sinks; they are quickly becoming net carbon emitters. Turning DNR trust lands into the same unmanaged condition is a recipe for more dead trees, more catastrophic wildfires, and more carbon emissions.
Across Washington, the size and severity of wildfires have accelerated, with the number of acres burned each year increasing more than fivefold since the 1980s. The Bear Gulch Fire in the Olympic National Forest is a reminder the Olympic Peninsula is not immune to destructive wildfires.
Active forest management, by contrast, plays a positive role in managing fuel loads in our forests and addressing climate change. Washington is one of the best places in the world to grow and harvest trees, with fast-growing forests that absorb carbon quickly. When those trees are sustainably harvested and made into long-lived wood products, such as framing lumber, they continue storing carbon for decades. Meanwhile, harvested areas are replanted, and the carbon cycle begins again.
If we eliminate sustainable timber harvests on state lands, where will our wood come from? If not here, where forest practices are science-based, transparent, and heavily regulated, then it will come from other places that don’t share the same high environmental standards. Further, replacing Washington-made wood with more carbon-intensive materials like steel and concrete would only worsen our emissions. Talberth offers no real answer to this dilemma.
He also overstates the feasibility of his proposed solutions. A carbon tax on forest landowners would not magically replace state trust land revenues, and it could incentivize some landowners to convert their forests to other uses. Eliminating the DNR’s harvest program would only shrink the state’s wood supply, threatening mill closures and job losses in communities.
The idea of enrolling DNR lands into carbon markets would not come close to replacing the $180 million DNR generates annually through timber harvests for schools and other beneficiaries. And most carbon offset markets allow polluters in faraway places to keep polluting, while communities in Washington bear the brunt of increased wildfire risks and declining forest health.
Washington faces two primary forest risks: declining forest health and permanent land conversion. We are losing forests to wildfire and development at an alarming rate. Since 1938, Washington has lost 2.5 million acres of forestland, and 394,000 acres in just the last decade.
The answer is not to “preserve” more forests in name only, but to actively manage them in ways that reduce fuels, enhance resilience, and maintain their ability to grow, sequester carbon, and provide renewable materials and conservation benefits.
The real climate solution is keeping forests as forests, managing them well, and using the renewable materials they produce to build a more sustainable future. Let’s grow Washington’s role as a leader in climate-smart forestry, rather than chasing unrealistic policies that ignore both science and economics.