Are Our Forests really in “Disrepair”?

As candidate for Commissioner of Public Lands, Republican Jaime Hererra-Beutler has consistently asserted that, according to “the science,” it’s necessary to log our legacy forests to keep them from “burning up.” She asserts that “too many of our forests have been undermanaged or outright neglected, and they’ve turned into crowded, diseased tinderboxes, just waiting for a spark.” They’ve “fallen into disrepair,” she says, and need “cleaning up.”

But is it true? Is there really a scientific consensus saying so? And what type of forest is she talking about? Washington is a big state. Legacy forests are identified only on the west side of the state and then only below 3,500 feet. There, you have to differentiate between forests that are naturally regenerated (legacy forests) and those already converted to timber plantations (managed plantations).

I got some on-the-ground insight into the matter a couple years ago when I joined a group to visit a legacy forest in Whatcom County, named Bessie. To get there, we had to hike up some logging roads through Department of Natural Resources plantations. We passed trees on either side, but they were uniformly-sized trees crowded by other trees, branches jutting into branches, little light or life between them. The crowding decried by Hererra-Beutler was plain to see.

Then we came to the end of a spur and plunged in. After crossing a ravine and traversing the side of a hill, we entered an area of sudden spaciousness and light, with fewer trees but each one individual and unique. Some rose from yard-wide trunks, others were slender and lacy, such as the hemlocks filling the understory. Snags and trees that had fallen blazed with a wild profusion of mosses and lichen. We were standing in Bessie.

Very quickly I saw evidence for what I had come to learn — that mature, diverse forests propagate the one thing that matters most when it comes to fire—water. Around me were fallen, habitat-rich logs that were also massive sponges, soaking up water from winter rains and banking it for the drier summer. Thickly piled, moss-covered soil sank under my steps, storing not only carbon, but water.

By the calm in the air I could feel how the high canopy and rich understory slowed desiccating winds. Around me, giant Douglas fir had sunk roots, tapping aquifers, bringing water from deep below ground up into the forest. Mushrooms abounded, indicating a rich underground network of fungal hyphae, dispersing resources and and helping the forest deal with pathogens and climate change. And I noticed a profound change in the air: while the air through the managed plantations was clear, it became foggy with mist as soon as we approached Bessie.

I also saw why such places are critical for wildlife. Everywhere was the evidence: mossy snags drilled out by woodpeckers, larger cavities where nests were carved out. On the mossy carpet, a profusion of  elk droppings sat alongside bright, freshly-pecked chips of wood.

What Hererra-Beutler wants to “clean up” happens to be wildlife habitat. And rather than “falling into disrepair,” what I witnessed was the opposite: a forest repairing itself, on its way to recreating a piece of old-growth splendor that once carpeted the Washington lowlands. as the real “crowded, diseased tinderboxes” are in fact the DNR’s huddled plantations, not Bessy.

Has Hererra-Beutler taken arguments that may make sense for managed forests and applied them to legacy forests where they don’t? Why does no one ask the first and most obvious question? How much has the conversion of true forests to managed plantations affected the forests’ ability to hydrate against wildfire? Keep in mind that since most forests are under some form of management, most of the fires are in managed forests.

As for “the science,” the forest harvesting industry has argued for decades that when forests get old, they become overgrown and need to be logged. But not all scientists agree. Fire ecologist Chad Hanson calls this idea “the overgrown forest myth” and says it’s been discredited. I’ve seen for myself how little sense it makes, at least in naturally regenerated forests on the west side of the Cascades below 3500 feet.

Herrera-Beutler isn’t the first politician to use trauma around wildfires to argue for logging older forests. We heard the same pitch during the Trump years, when Donald Trump’s Department of Interior manipulated science to argue for more logging as a fire preventive. Jaime Hererra-Beutler has simply picked up the torch, (no pun intended).

But this isn’t really about science. It’s about living places. A forest that’s been allowed to grow back according to its own design, carries, by extension, the design of the original forests, the genetic intelligence and expression of what took millions of years to evolve. Do we value that? Do we feel any responsibility to it, particularly when we lengthen our horizon to include coming generations? Don’t they deserve these places that are growing back what was here before? Do we value the wildlife that finds home and sustenance in these places? What about their role in watersheds, maintaining streamflow and keeping temperatures cool for salmon, releasing water vapor and rain nuclei, making clouds?

If you’ve noticed, the other candidate, Dave Upthegrove, hasn’t made any claims about “the science.” He properly leaves that with science. Instead, he’s taken a stance based on environmental and democratic values. Upthegrove recognizes that our legacy forests have more than economic worth, and as the only candidate to refuse timber-industry money, he best represents the public interest.