By Alan Kycek / For The Herald
For more than a decade, I’ve worked as a forest harvest engineer helping plan harvest operations across Hampton’s forestlands in Washington. We are a 93-year-old family wood products company, with a passion for forestry, community, arts and health and well-being of our employees. My job is to ensure that timber harvests are safe, environmentally responsible and economically viable. That means designing roads, stream crossings and harvest units that meet some of the strictest forest practices rules in the country.
We take our stewardship seriously. That’s why our company fully embraced the Forests an Fish Agreement and the resulting Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan, a 50-year agreement approved by federal agencies in 2006 to protect water quality and fish habitat through science-based adaptive management.
But today, we’re at risk of breaking that balance. The Forest Practices Board approved a rule this week to impose full length no-harvest buffers on both sides of non-fish perennial streams non-fish perennial streams — streams that flow all year but do not bear fish — may sound simple, but on the ground, it threatens the feasibility of harvesting forests that were hand planted decades ago and grown under the science-based Forests & Fish protections.
Operational impacts are real and often overlooked: Under current rules, buffers around non-fish-bearing streams are flexible. We use a combination of 50-foot no-harvest zones totaling roughly half the stream length, prioritizing patches around sensitive features like springs, seeps and tributary junctions. Importantly, we can arrange these buffers to preserve access, protect slope stability and maintain harvest system integrity, just as the habitat conservation plan envisioned.
The new rule eliminates flexibility. For operations, the continuous, full-length buffer means:
• Roads will often need to be extended or even completely rerouted, likely into steeper terrain or over longer distances. These new roads will result in additional stream crossings as well, something all engineers try to avoid when we can.
• Cable logging systems may be unable to reach some areas, reducing the operable area even further beyond those acres left behind in additional stream buffer.
• Harvest units become fragmented or inaccessible, pushing operators toward more expensive or less efficient methods such as the use of intermediate supports which also add additional layer of safety concerns to a timber harvest.
These aren’t minor inconveniences. They are major operational challenges that increase costs, reduce productivity, and threaten the long-term sustainability of forest investments.
The Forests & Fish conservation plan was based on extensive study and federal approval. It anticipated some short-term, small increases in water temperature in non-fish-bearing streams post-harvest and determined these would not harm fish, nor violate water quality standards.
Subsequent monitoring by the state’s adaptive management program has confirmed that forest practices cause anticipated minor and temporary thermal responses in non-fish-bearing streams, which dissipate downstream and remain well below regulatory temperature thresholds.
In other words: the system is working. So why are we changing it?
Let’s not undermine decades of stewardship: As engineers, we can adapt to challenges, but we need predictability. Forest investments take decades to mature. Current stream buffers have removed nearly 200,000 acres of working forests to protect fish habitat and water quality. Now, a sudden policy shift will double that set-aside, eliminating an estimated 200,000 additional acres of planned harvest area. That’s enough wood lost to build 15,000 homes per year at a time when Washington faces a deep housing affordability crisis. The consequences are real and fall hardest on landowners who have followed the rules and stewarded their forests responsibly for generations.
Washington’s forest sector is a national leader in sustainable forestry. We’ve proven that we can protect water, wildlife and rural jobs. But when rules are rewritten without operational input or scientific necessity, we risk undermining both stewardship and sustainability.
Let’s return to a process grounded in science, field data and collaborative solutions, not arbitrary restrictions that ignore the realities of forest management.
Alan Kycek is a forester for Hampton Lumber and Family Forests with offices in Darrington and Portland.
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