Letter to our legislators in Olympia
Dear District 24 legislators:
Olympic Climate Action represents 800 members on the Olympic Peninsula dedicated to taking action on climate change. As its forests chair, and based on positions taken by OCA’s board, I urge you to continue conserving mature forests and buying replacement lands for economically-impacted rural communities such as ours using the Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) account of the Climate Commitment Act funds in this year’s budget. Our mature forests are one of our best natural climate solutions, and investment in Washington’s mature forests advances multiple goals: carbon sequestration, forest health, and resilience to climate change impacts including wildfire, flooding, water shortage, and biodiversity loss.
Washington’s older state forests are among the most carbon-dense in the world, making them invaluable tools for fighting climate change. They are not only in their prime for carbon storage and sequestration, but they also provide essential ecosystem services that make us more resilient to the growing impacts of climate change. This funding is essential for conserving our best carbon sequestering forests that are at risk of being lost, while also purchasing replacement lands to add to the overall public land base.
Since 2023, the state legislature has invested $98 million from the NCS Account to conserve 2,300 acres of mature forests in Whatcom, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, Kitsap, Jefferson, and Clallam counties, as well as replacing over 5,900 acres of lands previously encumbered by the Marbled Murrelet Strategy, thus keeping timber communities such as ours whole while protecting important public natural resources. However, the demand from counties across Western WA was much greater than anticipated, and thousands more acres of mature forests have been requested by local governments for permanent protection. This is an important opportunity to continue investing NCS funds to conserve mature forests and purchase replacement lands.
I note that the bulk of NCS funds in Governor Inslee’s proposed budget were directed toward salmon recovery, and though salmon recovery is an important commitment, it should be primarily funded from other sources. I also want to stress that protecting forests is critical to achieve long-term salmon recovery. Last night I attended an excellent presentation at the Lower Elwha Tribal Center by Oliver Grah, former natural resources manager with the Nooksack Tribe. He described groundbreaking work demonstrating the major impact that overall logging in a watershed can have on streams, even when far upslope from them, by disrupting natural flow regimes, increasing flooding in the winter and drought in the summer, with major impacts on federally-protected salmonids. If we don’t get out ahead of the climate crisis, it will swallow us all up, the salmon included.
On a personal note, down the line I would urge you to find solutions to the funding time-delay problem experienced by many of the junior taxing districts in our less-advantaged rural communities, where replacement lands would ultimately yield far more income (because they are younger and cost less per acre), but where the beneficiaries feel stressed to have their funding now. It seems to me that the Legislature could address this sequencing problem by creating some kind of revolving loan fund which would provide up-front money that could be paid off at harvest time. And if the trust parcels could be unified in some manner, with the proceeds pro-rated fairly across beneficiaries, it would provide a mechanism for far more steady and predictable income. Perhaps a small proviso could fund a study by a forest economist along these lines.
I urge you to support the 2025 NCS Proviso Request for Forest Carbon, Encumbered Lands, and Resource Protection. Thank you for considering this important matter.
Sincerely, Ed Chadd, forests chair, Olympic Climate Action
North Olympic Peninsula residents working to stem climate disruption
Washington State, U.S.A.
Territories of the chalá·at (Hoh), kʷoʔlí·yot’ (Quileute), qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌ (Makah), nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm̕ (Klallam), & t͡ʃə́mqəm (Chemakum) peoples
Olympic Climate Action 