Climate-Smart Forestry
DNR’s climate-smart forestry practices ensure Washington forests capture and store carbon, provide critical fish and wildlife habitat, and help communities and forests adapt to a changing climate.
At DNR, we believe that working forests are one of the best solutions to climate change when they are conserved, restored, and managed under the principles of climate-smart forestry (CSF).
CSF is essential to meeting our climate goals. These sustainable practices increase carbon sequestration and storage capacity of Pacific Northwest forests, reducing carbon in the atmosphere and storing it in trees and wood products we depend on every day in our homes, schools, and hospitals.
Wood is a renewable product that has a lower carbon footprint than steel, concrete, or even recycled plastic. Sourcing our wood products sustainably in Washington contributes to thousands of jobs throughout Washington communities and reduces our dependence on foreign wood sourced under questionable environmental practices.
CSF also makes our forests more resilient to drought, disease, insect infestation and wildfire. We contribute more carbon into the atmosphere when forests are left unmanaged – wildfire has become one of the greatest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Washington. CSF helps prevent forest death from disease or fire and instead ensures carbon sequestration and storage.
All our forests are managed under CSF practices approved by the World Wildlife Fund, Washington Conservation Action, the International Living Future Institute, Northwest Natural Resource Group, Carbon Leadership Forum, Ecotrust, and Sustainable Northwest. DNR adheres fully to all eight CSF practices across the two million acres of forest we steward across Washington.
1. DNR has significantly reduced the average size of harvest openings, increased the number of trees we leave intact within harvest areas, and lengthened harvest rotations (allowed tree stands to capture more carbon prior to harvesting).
CSF at DNR means only select trees are harvested – we never clear-cut our forests. Our Policy for Sustainable Forests limits harvest openings to 100 acres or less, and our average harvest size is far smaller. We grow our forests on longer harvest rotations, allowing tree stands to sequester more carbon from the atmosphere. This includes all our silviculture and forest resilience treatments, harvesting younger, smaller diameter trees as necessary to reduce disease, insect infestation, wildfire risk, and ensure remaining tree stands grow larger and healthier. Longer rotations enable tree stands to sequester and store more carbon than younger stands.
DNR follows Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) standards across all two million acres of forest we manage. Outside experts verify DNR’s responsible management practices. As a result, DNR is the largest supplier in Washington of large, high-quality wood products including utility poles, large timbers, and structural cross arms.
2. DNR manages our forests for a diversity of tree sizes, ages, and native species that make up multiple forest conditions and habitats.
For all two million acres of forests we manage and steward, we follow the principles of ecological forest management, using variable retention harvest and variable density thinning and avoiding clear-cuts to achieve forest stands that have a diversity of tree sizes, ages, and native species, preventing monocultures. We foster greater biodiversity and healthier forest conditions and habitats when we allow forests to grow with variation.
3. DNR thins unnaturally dense and fire-prone forest stands, and we restore the forests’ capacity to withstand natural disturbances using prescribed fire and other means.
Our forests in Washington state are changing, buffeted by increasing drought, disease, and insect infestation. To ensure the long-term health of our forests in a changing climate, our forest resilience scientists develop forest health treatments that range from thinning forest stands to using prescribed fire to ensure our forests are better able to withstand fire and other natural disturbances. In the last seven years, we have restored almost one million acres of forests to health, rapidly scaling up our forest health investments.
4. DNR protects water quality and aquatic habitat with ecologically appropriate buffers along streams and around wetlands.
DNR has set aside more than one million acres of forest we manage for preservation, protecting more than 90 critical fish and wildlife species and aquatic habitat along streams, rivers, and wetlands. We maintain buffers, or protection areas around wetlands, more than twice the size of the state’s forest practice rules. We protect larger areas than other state or local government standard for critical area or riparian buffer standard for forestry, agriculture, industrial, commercial, or residential use. For fish bearing streams, depending on site characteristics, those buffers can extend nearly 200 feet on each side of the stream, protecting an area larger than a football field.
5. DNR significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity impacts associated with forest management and the application of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
Our forests are key to the climate, sequestering and storing carbon, including in wood products we depend on every day. Half of the forests we manage (over one million acres) are in permanent preservation, ensuring we recover any emissions from harvests on remaining DNR lands. We use longer rotations in the forests we manage for sustainable wood products, ensuring more carbon is sequestered and stored than in younger tree stands. That is why wood products from our lands are considered climate-smart. Sourcing wood in Washington contributes to local economies and enables manufacturing and sales locally, further reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with importing wood products from other states or countries.
For every tree we harvest, three trees are planted in its place, further increasing the carbon sequestration in our forests. That cycle of sequestration, harvest, and sequestration creates the highest carbon benefit over time, even greater than just preserving all trees for hundreds of years. Many of the forest lands we manage and steward for harvest were heavily logged before we acquired them, with little biodiversity, ecological function, or valuable habitat protections. This is particularly true for places like Capitol Forest, which we purchased as damaged timber lands. We have since planted diverse species and grow on longer rotations to create forests with high ecological functions and biodiversity that you now see when walking through the forests.
Finally, for all two million acres of our forest lands, we follow standards under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to use the least amount and least impactful herbicide materials to control invasive species while ensuring successful reforestation.
6. DNR protects high conservation value forests, including but not limited to old growth, and protects and restores habitat for threatened and endangered species.
At DNR, we protect and restore our high-conservation valuable forests, old growth, and critical habitat for threatened and endangered species. Under our Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), Old Growth Policy, and Policy for Sustainable Forests, we have permanently protected our old growth forests, more than one million acres of high ecologically functioning structurally complex forests, including critical habitats for 90 threatened and endangered species. This work is not simply about protecting some 70,000 acres of forests. Through DNR’s leadership and practices in climate-smart forestry, we have permanently protected hundreds of thousands of acres of high ecologically functioning and old growth forests while also creating hundreds of thousands of acres of structurally complex forests.
As a result, all old growth and nearly 80 percent of the mature forests on state trust lands in western Washington is permanently conserved. The remaining 20 percent is sustainably managed along with our other working forests to provide the climate-smart wood products society needs. This will result in over 400,000 acres of old-growth and older forest by the end of our HCP.
7. DNR understands, respects, and upholds the rights and sovereignty of Tribal nations and Indigenous peoples through early and ongoing consultation and co-stewardship of cultural and natural resources.
We manage our lands with deep respect and reverence for traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems and are committed to co-stewarding these lands to restore critical fish and wildlife ecosystems and protect cultural resources. DNR managed lands are considered open and unclaimed lands where Tribes can exercise their rights, and we facilitate the exercise of these rights by providing access for Tribal members. Every timber harvest is reviewed by an archeologist to ensure cultural resources are protected in consultation with Tribes and the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. Tribes also participate in Interdisciplinary Team review of timber sales in the field, along with Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife and Washington Department of Ecology.
8. DNR ensures communities most impacted by forestry activities have a meaningful voice in decision-making and benefit equitably from the outputs derived from them.
At DNR, we work hard to ensure communities most impacted by forestry activities have a meaningful voice in decision-making and benefit from our forest stewardship. DNR staff meets with local governments, community members, Tribes, neighborhoods, advocacy organizations, and beneficiaries regularly to discuss forestry activities and practices. There is also significant opportunity for public comment through the State Environmental Policy Act process as sales are being prepared, and before and during our Board Meetings. DNR takes all these perspectives into account when making decisions about how to best manage and steward these public lands in perpetuity.
Our climate-smart forestry practices fund critical government services in the most rural and economically challenged communities, including school buildings, teachers, firefighting equipment, transportation, water quality, healthcare, housing, and human services. In some counties, DNR revenue has represented approximately 40% of their annual operating budget. DNR’s forestry drives more than direct funding for our communities, it also generates over $1.5 billion in economic activity each year. This economic activity supports tens of thousands of jobs while also providing locally sourced, sustainable wood products for our communities.
DNR’s forestry is critical not only to creating a sustainable environment and renewable economy but also create a more just and equitable society. That is why the Washington State Supreme Court concluded unanimously in our favor that "[u]sing granted state and forest board lands as productive trust property aligns with DNR’s general trustee duties and provides a benefit to the general population by boosting local economies as well as maintaining stronger and better-funded public systems of education and governance."
