Environmental group sues state over logging plan

07/13/2002

The Associated Press
King5 News

SEATTLE, WA - An environmental group has filed a lawsuit alleging the state Department of Natural Resources doesn't pay enough attention to the cumulative effects of logging.

The Washington Environmental Council's complaint is the department's decision to extend its 10-year Forest Resource Plan, which guides logging policy, for an extra three years. The group says the department needs to update the plan, which includes an analysis of how logging affects watersheds as a whole.

"To be a good land manager requires a holistic look at your land," said Becky Kelley, policy associate at the environmental council. What DNR is doing, she said, is a "hunt-and-peck method of forestry." The suit was filed Thursday in King County Superior Court.

 

The group says the department needs to update the plan, which includes an analysis of how logging affects watersheds as a whole.

The department manages 2.1 million acres of forest trust land, harvesting trees to pay for school construction and to support rural counties. Officials are now working on their own 10-year harvest plan and they say they are managing state trust land in an environmentally responsible way.

"Washington state has probably the highest level of forest protection in North America," said DNR spokesman Todd Myers.

The environmental council is also complaining that the state didn't give the public a chance to review and comment on the three-year extension. An agency memo states "there is no comment period" for the proposed extension.

Myers noted the extension was discussed at public meetings of the Board of Natural Resources, which has open public comment time every month. Myers said the public had an opportunity to comment on the extension and the environmental council was given a month's notice of the agency's plan.

"Every lawsuit filed by environmental groups is a step away from collaboration, which is how we want to do things," he said.

Collaboration doesn't always work, Kelley said: "Sometimes we have to bring stronger tools to bear."