STANWOOD — Clearing a few trails and cleaning up storm damage was about all the Amber-Oliver family ever did to maintain their wooded 20 acres in Stanwood.
That’s changing after they signed up for a forest stewardship class that could potentially save them thousands and help them make their forested land healthier and more beautiful.
The class is intended for landowners who own anywhere from a few wooded acres to a hundred. It’s designed to help landowners learn how to manage their land, not just for money but for a healthy forest.
The class covers the basic principles of forestry, including forest health, soils, fish habitat, wildlife and reforestation, said Keven Zobrist, a forest stewardship educator with the Washington State University Extension and an instructor for the class. Extension offers the class jointly with the Department of Natural Resources. Instructors touch on practical issues, such as wildfires and illegal dumping, and introduce landowners to ways to reduce property taxes and federal cost-sharing programs that can save money.
A common misconception is that wooded property doesn’t need to be managed, that nature can and should take its course, Zobrist said. Forests grow and change with time. Often, Mother Nature’s course doesn’t fit with the landowner’s wishes, he said. Trees may become diseased. The native plants might be choked by invasive species such as Himalayan blackberry. The tree canopy might be so dark and dense, it isn’t providing a sanctuary for wildlife.
“It’s a dynamic system,” he said. “People think if I don’t do anything, it will always look like this, and that’s not true.”
For many who take this class, this is the first time they’ve taken a close look at their land, Zobrist said. People come out of the class with a new set of eyes, he said. They understand how their land works and the class gets them thinking about stewardship as a deliberate process.
Variations of this class have been offered in Washington since the early 1990s. This class takes nine weeks, and in addition to some classroom lectures, landowners take a field trip and get one-on-one coaching from professionals. They receive an aerial photo of their land and notebooks of resource materials. The class fee is $150.
The tax burden for landowners can be substantial, and it’s one of the primary concerns of those who take the class, Zobrist said.
Snohomish County administers a program for the state Department of Revenue that can alleviate some of the tax burden. The current use taxation program, aimed at landowners with 5 to 20 acres of wooded property, allows tax breaks for those who agree to follow a certified forest-management plan. Zobrist said he heard about a landowner with 20 acres who had his $3,000 property tax bill reduced to $19 by qualifying for the tax break. Part of the class is helping landowners prepare a management plan that ordinarily can cost as much as $1,000 to have completed by a professional, Zobrist said.
Most landowners aren’t aware of federal programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which pays part of the cost of improvements owners might be making anyway, such as thinning, planting and pruning of trees, or improving forest roads to prevent erosion.
“Money is there but people aren’t lined up to take it,” Zobrist said. “We try to get as many people in the county involved as possible, otherwise the money goes some place else.”
A professional forester or wildlife biologist visits everyone’s property in the class. At a recent visit to the Amber-Olivers’ property, Zobrist and John Keller, a forest stewardship coordinator with the Department of Natural Resources, walked the property with John and Susan Amber-Oliver and their son, Cory Oliver. The instructors bored into the cores of trees to determine their age, examined the roots of a fallen tree for the presence of disease and found none, discussed what to plant around a pond and suggested how to handle stream buffer regulations around the creek that runs through the property.
The Amber-Olivers want to find ways to earn enough income from the property to help offset their property taxes. Susan Amber-Oliver said property taxes have increased rapidly and if they continue to rise at the current pace, they’ll have trouble paying them in retirement. Keller recommended the family consider harvesting a stand of alders nearly at the end of its lifespan. If they do nothing, the alders will fall and the area will become chocked with low-growing salmonberries, Keller said.
People with forested lawn often talk about “parking it out,” clearing out the understory of the woods so it’s parklike, said Susan Amber-Oliver. She now understands why that’s not a particularly healthy thing for the forest.
The family also wants to maintain and enhance the character of land. They want to keep it as natural as possible and not make any mistakes that might harm its long-term health, said Susan Amber-Oliver. They gets unsolicited offers from developers and real estate agents hoping the couple will sell. They’re not interested. This is their home, the site of a million memories, and the heritage they’d like to pass onto the next generation of their family.
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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