The Olympic Experimental State Forest and OFCO
July 17, 2006
Our state forest program has dramatically increased in size and importance since OFCO and our environmental partners entered into a settlement agreement with the State Department of Natural Resources and timber industry intervenors following our successful lawsuit ruling in 2005. See background information.
In general, the settlement protects all older forests on DNR-managed land in Western Washington from being logged through the lifetime of the agreement (8-1/2 more years to go!); but on the Olympic Experimental State Forest, where OFCO has its major program, the gains are more extensive, more time consuming, and of much greater significance.
The Olympic Experimental State Forest consists of 264,000 acres of land on the west and northwest end of the Olympic Peninsula. It contains about 80% of the remaining older forests on DNR land as well as some superb remaining habitat for salmon and bull trout. The agreement allows for three processes, which OFCO will be directly involved with:
- Eleven landscape plans will be done, which will incorporate all forest and aquatic resources. This will be wrapped into an Environmental Impact Statement. OFCO will have a seat at the table in developing these plans, both at the policy and technical levels.
- A 100-year modeling exercise regarding innovative silvicultural methods will inform future decisions made on DNR's logging techniques.
- A number of on-the-ground demonstration projects on innovative silviculture.
OFCO will play the leadership role on the OESF. Executive Director Bonnie Phillips and Board Member Marcy Golde continue to work at the policy level in the many meetings surrounding the agreement. Marcy and Board Members Jill Silver and Josey Paul are instrumental in our monitoring program. We are presently gathering volunteers to be trained to assist in this effort. OFCO plans to hire a contractor to interact in all the technical aspects of landscape planning and Bonnie has been assigned 35% of her staff time to work on implementing the agreement.
Public meetings on this effort will begin in fall of 2006. DNR estimates that it will take until June 2009 before the landscape plans are completed.
This effort, of course, requires money. OFCO has already received grants from the Northwest Fund for the Environment and the Horizons Foundation (for a total of $25,000) towards this effort. In addition, the four environmental organizations are beginning joint fundraising to fill the technical contractor and modeling contractor positions.
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