Comment: Leave working forests to their vital climate work

By Nick Smith / For The Herald

Actively managing Washington’s state trust lands and using locally sourced wood is a far better climate solution than leaving forests unmanaged. It is also better than “leasing” these public lands to private interests so faraway polluters can keep polluting through artificial carbon credit schemes.

The ongoing campaign to shut down these public working forests ignores the fact that timber harvesting is already prohibited on roughly half of all state trust lands in Western Washington. Millions of acres of federally owned lands in the state are also left unmanaged. These “protected” lands have abundant old growth and mature stands, but also tend to be unnaturally overstocked and vulnerable to carbon-emitting wildfires, insects and disease that increase tree mortality and decay.

On the half of state trust lands that are available for timber harvest, we can make Washington-made wood products that lock in carbon for generations, while supporting thousands of family-wage jobs across the state. When we’re managing forests, we’re reducing wildfire risks while ensuring clean air, water and recreational opportunities.

Further, state trust lands are managed under the strictest environmental standards in the nation. And for every one tree that’s harvested, three are replanted, and those young trees will sequester carbon at high rates for decades. Under the state constitution, timber from these lands generate nearly $200 million in revenue for public schools, public safety, health care services, and much more. These are all benefits that carbon credits and preservationist policies simply can’t provide.

When state trust lands are set aside from timber harvest, proponents seem to assume consumers and businesses stop using wood or constructing buildings. That is not the case. If consumers and business are not using wood that’s grown, harvested and made here in Washington, we experience “leakage” effects, such as the importing of wood products from other countries, and “substitution” effects where more carbon-intensive projects, including concrete and steel are used instead of wood. These factors can’t be disregarded in the pursuit of a narrow political agenda.

At our request, researchers at the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) and the University of Washington’s Center for International Trade in Forest Products used data from a timber sale in Jefferson County and publicly available U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to conduct a full carbon accounting of the timber sale using established life-cycle assessment data on forestry, forest operations, and manufacturing of products that were produced from that sale.

After accounting for substitution and leakage, the study found that for every acre of state trust lands that are harvested to produce carbon-storing wood products, an additional 11.71 metric tons of carbon dioxide are stored or offset in the same year, compared to a no-harvest scenario.

This means that renewable timber harvests and the use of wood products from state trust lands avoids more than 128,000 metric tons of carbon emissions each year, which is the equivalent of removing 28,000 gasoline vehicles from the road. Using this Washington-made wood doesn’t simply offset emissions, as carbon credit schemes claim to do, but result in real net reductions.

Timber from state trust lands offer a strong incentive to use Washington wood over more energy-intensive materials. The CORRIM study data suggests that using softwood lumber for framing instead of steel avoids 17 kilograms of carbon emissions per square meter.

Washington has millions of acres of unmanaged publicly owned forests, at the same time the state is failing to achieve its own ambitious carbon-reduction goals, despite the higher fuel costs and millions of dollars generated under the Climate Commitment Act. The state will fail to achieve meaningful climate benefits by shutting down more working forests, stopping the production of Washington-made wood products, nor selling carbon credits on public lands to faraway polluters.

Nick Smith is public affairs director for the American Forest Resource Council, representing Washington’s forest sector that depends on timber management on state Department of Natural Resources trust lands.