A new executive order makes the future of Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest uncertain
The Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, which runs along the Cascade Mountains through eastern Whatcom and Skagit counties, contains a patchwork of forest ages and types from never-logged to recently clearcut and everywhere in between. The land reflects many priorities and philosophies of how to use its resources.
At the national level, these priorities are expressed through the U.S. Forest Service. Closer to home, residents have shaped the forests to their own values for as long as humans have dwelled here.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration signed an executive order to increase timber production from public lands such as Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest. The order is unclear about the amount and scope of logging that is to take place. It mainly calls for easing the burden of policies that lengthen the timeline and reduce the certainty of timber sales.
By the end of this month, federal agencies managing public timberlands are ordered to issue new guidance for a quicker turnaround on timber sales. They will also be required to submit legislative proposals for expanded timber harvesting authority to the Office of Management and Budget.
The order includes several more deadlines addressing different areas of forest management, such as wildfire risk reduction, in increments of 30 days each. It takes full effect in December 2025.
The final deadline calls for categorical exclusions on public lands, meaning that environmental impact assessments would no longer be required to log areas that are more strictly managed under current interpretations of environmental laws.
Redirected
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, which houses the Forest Service, is one of the principal agencies redirected by the order.
“Providing a sustainable supply of domestic timber has been one of the core missions of the USDA Forest Service since its inception 120 years ago,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email. “Forest timber fuels the industries that build our homes, businesses and support prosperous rural communities.”
The Forest Service mission statement presents a different vision. It says that the core mission is “caring for land and caring for people,” with a heavy emphasis on conservation.
The order refers to many Forest Service policies as burdensome and calls for streamlining the permitting process for timber sales “to the maximum extent permissible by law.” The USDA spokesperson claimed that many of these laws as they are currently being interpreted neither protect endangered species nor benefit the public.
The Pacific Northwest’s national forests have a unique web of regulations and agreements directing how they are managed, making the regional implications of this executive order uncertain, according to Kaia Hayes, land and water policy manager at RE Sources in Bellingham.
“The Forest Service has the multiple use mandate to balance a number of uses on its public lands, one of them being timber, in addition to habitat recreation, leases for mineral extraction, etcetera,” Hayes said. “The real nuts and bolts of what that should look like are laid out in the Northwest Forest Plan and the individual forest plans.”
The Northwest Forest Plan, currently undergoing updates, strikes a balance between timber harvest and conservation of wildlife habitat, with multi-stakeholder consultation at its center. It is a compromise born out of the timber wars of the 1990s sparked, in part, by the old growth-dependent northern spotted owl.
Endangered species in the matrix
Today, the forest is managed to meet the habitat needs of the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelets and salmon. Both the marbled murrelet and the owl are threatened and protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Most of the forest’s 1.7 million acres are set aside as wilderness areas and other designations. About 94,000 acres are matrix, where activities like logging are allowed to take place.
In recent years, contracts for logging on National Forest land has slowed even in the matrix parts of the forest, according to Peter Janicki, Operations Manager at Janicki Logging and Construction based in Sedro-Woolley.
“Most of the (the Forest Service’s) timber sales are sued multiple times by conservation groups that, at the end of the day, just don’t want logging,” Janicki said. “Our perspective is we should absolutely be logging more in the Pacific Northwest and less overseas, where there is no regulation — we have the highest regulated forest in the world.”
The executive order appears to keep those regulations in place. It directs federal agencies overseeing public lands to streamline key consultations such as those required under the Endangered Species Act, but not to log in areas where they are present.
“Under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act, USDA will continue to meet its commitments to protecting vulnerable wildlife while also meeting the president’s directive to provide the nation with abundant domestic timber,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email.
Best forest practices required companies like Janicki Logging to stop working whenever they encounter signs of an endangered species or other significant wildlife presences like bald eagle nests.
Long-term relationship
Janicki Logging has been working the Pacific Northwest forests for three generations, over 60 years, and has formed a strong relationship with the Forest Service that makes it unique among logging companies, Janicki said.
But the relationship is not without its frustrations. When the Forest Service enacted the Northwest Forest Plan, it agreed to open up about half a billion board feet of timber per decade in the Western States, according to Janicki.
A board foot is a common measurement for quantifying the amount of wood either in a tree or in a finished forest product. One board foot is 144 cubic inches, or about the volume of a pizza box.
In reality, the Forest Service has opened a tiny fraction of that for harvest in the last 10 years, Janicki said.
Volume is only part of the issue, Janicki said. The Forest Service limits harvest times to summer and early fall for road accessibility and to protect soil and watersheds, reduce fire risk and minimize ecological damage.
“This is where I’d love to reach out to Trump and the rest of these regulators and say, ‘hey, here’s our actual issues: I’m running a logging company in Washington where you say, let’s go get more timber volume — I’m not even asking for more timber. I’m asking for the 7 million feet I have under contract that I could actually go in there and log it instead of being told I gotta wait ‘till June’,” Janicki said.
Rain, snow and soil damage
Parts of the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest receive up to 200 inches of rain and snow per year in some parts. When the soil is the wettest, when the rain is falling and the snow is melting, the soil is more prone to damage by heavy equipment.
Increased runoff can carry excess sediment into nearby streams during times of high precipitation. This sediment can have a negative impact on salmon egg nests, called redds, which can get smothered in the excess sediment.
Logging is allowed year-round on private and state forest lands, according to Janicki. Forestry best practices now address these issues with more advanced equipment, protective layers of brush on the ground, hay bales and sediment screens and halting operations if muddy water is spotted flowing downslope.
But Janicki believes the Forest Service has another reason for only logging for part of the year.
‘’The Forest Service always claims to have personnel issues, yet they have layers of staff from field officers to layout specialists to ecologist archaeologist soil specialists, ectcetera,’’ Janicki wrote in an email. ‘’Janicki (Logging) would like to work the forest year-round but constantly is told it wouldn’t be possible.’’
A shortage of staff has been an issue for the Forest Service throughout recent history, according to Hayes. This has made it challenging to complete the amount of work that goes into the baseline level of logging, let alone the increase called for under the executive order, she said.
Forest Service employees did not respond to a request for comment on this topic.
Between June and October when the Forest Service allows logging, the trees have higher sap flows which makes their bark more prone to damage from other trees being felled on the way down.
Logging companies get penalized for any damage to surrounding trees, according to Janicki. This requires logging to happen much more carefully than it would have to in the colder months when the bark is tougher.
The increase in the amount of time it takes to log increases the chances of trees being lost to environmental factors, Janicki said. In the past decade, more forest has been burned in the national forests of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada and Montana than have been logged there.
Blowdowns and disease also kill and can render trees useless to loggers and industries that need the wood.
Upper Skagit traditions
Washington has a big need for building materials. To keep pace with growth, about 50,000 new homes per year will need to be built for the next 20 years, according to the Department of Commerce. That’s going to require a lot of wood.
But tribes such as the Upper Skagit Nation have been using the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest since time immemorial, and logging proposals must be examined on a case by case basis for their cultural impacts, said Scott Schuyler, Upper Skagit policy representative for cultural and natural resources.
The Forest Service sends the Upper Skagit Tribe consultation requests whenever a land-altering decision is under consideration. They respond with comments whenever those decisions might impact an area of particular significance, Schuyler said.
One such area is the popular Baker Lake area, where stands of ancient cedar trees surround Horseshoe Cove, the former site of an Upper Skagit salmon fishing village, and the forest is central to ceremonies and the gathering of traditional medicines, foods and materials, Schuyler said.
Horseshoe Cove and many other sites around Baker Lake are now home to campgrounds and trails, which is true of many areas throughout the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest.
“It’s unlikely that some of these more heavily used and multi-use areas are going to be the initial targets for projects and work like this,” Hayes said. “But, it’s important for local and regional groups to be vigilant and to understand what the potential consequences could be.”
At the same time that some areas may need to remain set aside to align with recreational, cultural and habitat preservation goals, many of the trees that cloth the rolling hills up to Mount Baker and other peaks with a rich forest green were re-planted by loggers, according to Janicki. Logging is part of this landscape’s story, and each harvest is a new chapter.
“The industry has changed a lot,” he said. “We actually take care of the streams, we take care of fish buffers, and we work with the tribes. We do what we need to do to be correct now.”
— By Jacob O’Donnell
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Commentary: Seeing the forests through the plantations,” Dec. 20, 2024
• “Commentary: Unfortunately, Mother Earth wasn’t on the ballot,” Nov. 7, 2024
• “Litigation looms over latest round of Washington state timber sales,” Oct. 3, 2024
• “Logging decision looms over Concrete neighborhood fearing landslide,” Sept. 6, 2024
• “More scrutiny sought on proposed logging around North Fork near Glacier,” June 26, 2020