ANALYSIS | The CPL Candidates Are at Loggerheads Over 77,000 Acres — Where Even Are They?

Nowhere, it turns out. Well, not nowhere, but not in one specific place. What are these hotly contested acres, then, and why are there 77,000 of them? We’re so glad you asked, because the answer kind of explains everything you need to know about the Commissioner of Public Lands race.

Let’s set the stage: The Republican candidate for Commissioner of Public Lands, former U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, has accused the Democratic candidate, King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove, of planning to remove 77,000 acres of forest from rotation for timber sales, thereby robbing the state’s children of precious education funding. She’s also brought up cops and firefighters, who occasionally benefit from the portion of timber sales that occur on lands managed by the State on behalf of counties.

To say it’s a central statistic in this race is not an understatement. Herrera Beutler herself has brought it up repeatedly in debates with Upthegrove. Attack ads bought on her behalf by the timber-industry-funded PAC Concerned Taxpayers of Washington State have referenced it as well. The amount she says it will cost the state is also shocking, which is surely her intent. In a recent Instagram post, Herrera Beutler wrote, “On Day 1, my opponent wants to lock up 77,000 more acres of state trust land, a plan that would require the state to spend another $2 billion to replace the value of those lands.”

Listen, this journalist is by no means an expert on the price of logging rights, but $2 billion sounds like … a lot. Herrera Beutler did not respond to an emailed request to show her work in getting to that number. Upthegrove, on the other hand, was more than happy to weigh in.

In an hourlong video call, Upthegrove explained where the 77,000 number came from, what kinds of forests are included in it, and what would actually happen with school (and other) funding should we elect to preserve those forests.

The 77,000 acres in question are a portion of the state’s 1.2 million acres of forest not in conservation status (i.e., not old-growth forests, which we never log), allowing the State to sell access to the timber on those lands. Upthegrove admitted he was to blame for his opponent’s fixation on that number, as he included it in early campaign materials as a conservation target. However, given that several timber sales have already gone through, it’s more like 67,000 now, he said.

The 77,000 acres comprises many different forests, but the through line is that they are all mature, structurally diverse forests, often referred to as “legacy” forests. What do these legacy forests look like?

The Center for Responsible Forestry, an environmental group, describes legacy forests thusly: “Legacy Forests are structurally complex, mature forests. They were often logged prior to 1945, after which began the widespread use of clearcutting with chainsaws, herbicides, and replanting as monocrops. They are critical for biodiversity, water quality, and salmon habitat. They store and sequester vast amounts of carbon at rates unequaled in the world. They are natural forests, not tree plantations, and as such they are more resistant to wildfire.”

There are plenty of legacy forests right here in King County, Upthegrove notes. 

“The way I describe them is you know them when you walk into them,” he says. These forests tend to have lots of ferns and lichen mixed in, he adds, and trees in various stages of development, which is what scientists mean when they describe a forest stand as being structurally diverse.

“They’re just very developed,” he said. “And I think it’s why they hold a special place for a lot of residents who live near them or who hike. That’s a whole separate value we haven’t talked about — that human value that people place on being able to access places like this.”

Upthegrove and his fellow King County Councilmembers have asked the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) not to approve timber sales of legacy forests in King County, and they’ve been successful in at least one instance.

However beautiful these forests might be, if Upthegrove is elected and ends up pulling their sales, he’s got to have a more ironclad argument than “trees pretty,” because he expects to be defending his decisions in court.

“I’ve been promised litigation by the timber industry on this,” he said. This is where the State’s Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) comes into play. The HCP was put in place via the Endangered Species Act and provides a road map to protect habitat for species like the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. The HCP requires us to maintain 10% to 15% of our forests in each planning region as mature, structurally diverse forests. Legacy forests, if you will.

Now, whether we are hitting those targets is up for debate. Upthegrove says he was confident, after researching the work and intent of previous commissioners, that the original HCP was intended to include the lands he wants to take out of logging rotation. This was the case all throughout the administration of Republican Doug Sutherland, but something changed toward the end of the administration of Republican Peter Goldmark, who directly preceded current Commissioner Hilary Franz, Upthegrove says. Since then, Franz has been increasingly aggressive in opening up legacy forests for harvesting.

“I am confident this was the intent,” he says, of his plan to put aside tens of thousands of acres of legacy forest. “Not everyone agrees with me on that, though.”

Herrera Beutler is one of those people. However valuable these forests might be in terms of sequestering carbon, sheltering endangered wildlife, and soothing the souls of outdoor enthusiasts, she argues that the DNR under Franz has already identified them as being eligible for sale and so they should be sold. Not doing so, she claims, would deprive kids (and cops and firefighters) of a whopping amount of money in the near term. 

Not exactly, says Upthegrove.

The 77,000 acres in question are a relatively small portion of the 1.2 million total acres of timberland the State manages that carry no conservation status (we don’t log any old-growth forests, for example). Our total yearly harvest on State-managed lands, Upthegrove notes, is only about 10,000 acres. We can absolutely find other places to log, he says, and we should.

“When I went and looked at where we do have timber to harvest, I did a breakdown by county,” he said. “And there are suitable timberlands in every county except Island County, but there [are] no trees there!”

What’s more, we’re not talking about as much revenue as Herrera Beutler would like us to think. We were unable to get clarification from her on where the $2 billion number came from, but according to the DNR, timber sales generate around $200 million for education each year.

In a follow-up email about the $2 billion Herrera Beutler is claiming he’d cost the state, Upthegrove offered both a political and policy-based explanation of it. Politically, he said, “Her claim is nonsense — a false and ridiculous fear tactic often used by the logging industry.”

From a policy standpoint, he said essentially the same thing, but with more words: “She seems to not understand what I am proposing. I am not proposing ‘locking away’ any acres. I am suggesting that we defer the harvest of structurally diverse mature forests and instead harvest other forest parcels. DNR has been harvesting about 10,000 acres per year. We have 1.2 million acres of timberlands available for harvest. Forest data from the DNR suggests that about 200,000-250,000 acres are of the appropriate age class, but NOT in the mature ‘legacy’ forest category. This means for many, many years we have the option of simply harvesting other trees.”

Either way, Upthegrove says, timber sales are not only a relatively small portion of school funding, but also an unsustainable one. So, too, with the County funding that Herrerra has implied will basically defund the police and fire our fire departments, which typically takes the form of a windfall, he says, not a revenue stream.

“All of the money from all of the timber sales on the K-12 Trust lands combined accounts for 1.5% of the state’s share of new school construction,” he said. While timberlands accounted for a larger share of school funding when Washington was first granted federal forests to manage, he concedes, “it’s dwindling.” It’s also something current Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal has said we should move away from for school funding.

Reykdal even endorsed Upthegrove, writing, “Dave understands that we don’t need to pit kids against trees, and instead he has thoughtful plans to improve forest management while supporting funding for public services like schools.”

All that being said, if the state isn’t actually going to lose $2 billion overnight, why make it seem like we will?

“This is their best argument,” Upthegrove said. “They can’t go out and say, ‘God, you got to cut these trees or else we’re not going to make as much money!’ So they have really, really elevated this education message.”

They, in this case, being the timber industry, which has poured money into the race. In the primary, Upthegrove was unique even among Democratic candidates in that he didn’t accept any donations from timber companies or industry groups. Herrera Beutler, if you hadn’t already figured it out, has taken scads of it.

Another interesting aspect of the race is that Herrera Beutler has benefited quite a bit by portraying herself as a bipartisan spiritual successor to Franz, who is a Democrat. So much so that she earned the endorsement of The Seattle Times, The Everett Herald, and other papers, which praised her as a moderate Republican who would continue Franz’s work.

Upthegrove, on the other hand, has been portrayed as, if not a wild-eyed activist himself, a friend of wild-eyed activists. Attack ads have made much of a photo of Upthegrove with a younger activist, one who has advocated for some fairly extreme stuff on their personal Facebook, conflating a photo op with Upthegrove actually endorsing those views. Regardless, to anyone looking at this race in the simple terms of “Democratic incumbent good, change bad,” Upthegrove’s conservation proposals might indeed seem like a radical departure.

“[It] has created a political challenge for me,” Upthegrove admitted, “because I think Commissioner Franz is viewed as an environmentalist. She’s a Democrat. She’s done good communication work.”

But it’s not that simple. Franz, who is also fairly friendly with the timber industry, according to Upthegrove (and her campaign fundraising reports), has been front-loading sales of legacy forests as her term comes to a close.

“Typically they do about two timber sales a month at their board meetings,” Upthegrove noted. “They’ve pulled 10 legacy forest sales [for the Board of Natural Resources’ November meeting], including half of the remaining mature forests in the Elwha Watershed.”

Those sales are being rushed through to be sold before the end of the year, he says, something he’s not exactly in agreement with.

“I think I am the change candidate, in this case, in the sense of making some changes,” Upthegrove said. “And it is because on this issue, Commissioner Franz and I don’t see eye to eye.”

Pressing pause on her packed slate of timber sales would be a lot of work, he admits, and could cause some short-term financial pain. That pain, however, would be easily ameliorated by balancing out losses with increased sales in the future.

Herrera Beutler has pointed out that new timber sales take a long time to come online, as much as two to three years. The idea that we can simply replace the 77,000 acres with other, less ecologically valuable timber immediately is unrealistic, in her opinion. That’s not the case, Upthegrove argues.

“Let’s say we’ve been generating $100 million a year for the schools,” he posits (stressing that these are made-up numbers). “If we run into problems in my first year and we only generate $75 million, the next year we can do $125 million. You smooth it out over time.”

Those are what’s called “arrearages,” he says, and having those short-term deficits and making them up later is something that is relatively common in government. We don’t have space to go into them here, but Upthegrove has a few ideas about ways to make money off our forests besides logging them, some involving selling carbon credits, that he thinks can help quickly make up any arrearages.

In the end, as Upthegrove sees it, we can preserve mature forests without costing our kids a dime. And he wants to be the one to do it.

Or, we could do what Weyerhaeuser wants, and elect Herrera Beutler. While it doesn’t appear on the list of donors to her campaign, the timber behemoth did donate $225,000 to the pro-Herrera Beutler Concerned Taxpayers of Washington State PAC, alongside $200,000 from lumber company Sierra Pacific Industries, $200,000 more from timber management firm Mid-Valley Resources, $50,000 from timber baron Corry McFarland, $50,000 from Republican mega donor Lawrence P. Hughes, and a smattering of $500 to $1,000 donations from the Dunn family, owners of Dunn Lumber. If all that industry money wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, the Dunn family patriarch, Michael Dunn, is also on the board of wackadoo conservative think tank the Discovery Institute.

“I think Weyerhaeuser was her biggest contributor in Congress, and it’s reflected in her votes,” Upthegrove said. Herrera Beutler used her time in Congress to vote to undermine the Endangered Species Act (which, as we just learned, inhibits logging in certain areas), and she has sided over and over again with the oil industry (she was in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline and has pushed to limit the liability of oil companies for spills and accidents). Herrera Beutler also has an F rating from the League of Conservation Voters, something Upthegrove is quick to point out.

To be fair to Herrera Beutler, as far as money goes, Upthegrove has actually outspent her on this campaign almost 2-to-1. However, all her PAC money is not for naught. While organizations associated with Upthegrove have spent only $66,150 on ads opposing Herrera Beutler, her backers have shelled out a whopping $323,865 to run attack ads on Upthegrove. They know that pinning a dubious-at-best claim of school funding shortages on Upthegrove — “pitting kids against trees,” as he puts it — is their path to victory, and they’re spending plenty on it. 

To succeed, they’re hoping a lot of voters just can’t be bothered to go more than skin deep on such an esoteric subject. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re not one of them.

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