American Forest Resource Council

AFRC Washington State Program

AFRC’s Washington State Program advocates for sustainable timber production and active forest management on the state’s public timberlands.  These include working forests managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as state trust lands, the nine national forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and to a lesser extent lands managed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

Our Washington State Program blends services from all AFRC programs to give our members a powerful voice on various forestry and timber-related issues in Olympia and elsewhere.  Our staff actively engages the Washington State Legislature, Board of Natural Resources, other relevant agencies, and the Courts to ensure the state fulfills its fiduciary and constitutional obligation to manage DNR trust lands for its beneficiaries.

In addition to providing monitoring services to members on Washington State’s national forests, our Washington State Program engages with other stakeholders on Forest Service focused collaboratives, including leadership positions. Additionally the program pursues opportunities for cross-boundary forest management activities where national forests and DNR trust lands intersect, as well as promoting the use of Good Neighbor and Shared Stewardship Authorities. We also work closely with allies and partner organizations to protect and strengthen the state’s forest products sector across the supply chain.

Washington State Program Staff

Matt Comisky, Washington State Manager

Heath Heikkila, Government Affairs

Tom Partin, OR/WA/Panhandle Consultant

Key Accomplishments

  • Helped write and pass bipartisan carbon legislation signed into law by Governor Inslee establishing a state policy that recognizes Washington’s forest sector as net “sequesterers” of carbon.  This state policy will help insulate and protect the forest industry from potential negative impacts of future carbon/climate legislation.
  • Led the most aggressive and important litigation on public timber in Washington state in recent memory. AFRC’s legal challenge of the DNR’s marbled murrelet and Sustainable Harvest Calculation decisions – which includes beneficiaries such as schools, counties, and fire districts – has implications for the availability of hundreds of millions of board feet on the market in Washington in the next decade.
  • Leveraged our bipartisan relationships in Olympia to help pass an extension of the B&O preferential rate for forest products companies until 2034; pass a Budget Proviso reaffirming trust obligations of DNR to beneficiaries (cutting timber); and defeated concepts by anti-forestry groups to permanently withdraw thousands of acres of DNR Trust Land from sustained yield timber production. This effort has maintained millions of board feet on the open market now and into the future.

 

Resources