CLALLAM COUNTY, Wash. — For two weeks now, a protester part of the Olympic Forest Defender network of conservationists has lived two-thirds up a Fir tree just south of Port Angeles, protesting the sale of a swath of forest by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. The sale, approved by the DNR Board last year, is in an area of what the conservationists call legacy forest, the same kind of forest Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove promised to protect during his campaign last year.
The Parched Timber Sale is several chunks of DNR land south of Highway 101 and northeast of Little River Rd in Clallam County. 183 acres is valued at $2.3 million, according to DNR’s posting.
“It’s totally counterintuitive,” the protestor said, who doesn’t want to be identified, “It just doesn’t even really make financial sense with how much money is being put into restoring the Elwha.”
The Elwha River watershed has been under intense conservation efforts to restore salmon populations and improve the overall health of the environment. It was the first river in Washington to see a damn removed from its waters in the name of those efforts. Stands of mature trees, Olympic Forest Defenders say, have a crucial role in preventing erosion, providing cooling shade for the spawning salmon, and maintaining the habitat and ecosystem that has been in place for around a century. Adding to the concerns—machine logging will cut stands of trees at a quicker pace than when they were hand logged years ago.
“It’s one of the last legacy forests that are low elevation in the whole Elwha watershed,” the protestor said.
“We’re taking more than we can afford to. The economy and all of these things that are artificially created are also destroying the planet,” they continued.
The group is one of several to oppose the sale. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal citizens have created a petition opposing it, the Earth Law Center and Legacy Forest Defense Coalition has filed suit to stop the sale, and the Port Angeles City Council opposed its sale, according to the Seattle Times.
“We’re seeing how people in the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe who have cultural ties to this land. They aren’t just experiencing a loss of recreation area if this forest gets logged, they’re experiencing a loss of their actual cultural ties,” the protester said.
When a KIRO 7 crew visited the site of the protest, two DNR staff were stationed at the gate entrance. Three miles up winding dirt roads sits a cable in the ground surrounded by logs and caution tape. The protester says that if that cable is disturbed, the platform they are on falls, sending them down a more than 70-foot fall to the forest floor below. In effect, it blockades larger logging equipment.
“You can’t really remove that setup that’s blocking access past that point in the road without, at the very least, putting me in very serious danger,” the protester said, “If you cut the rope, you’re likely killing me.”
The protester said they wouldn’t come down until the sale was completely canceled. DNR says they have “no plans” to do that.
“We hope the demonstrator will come down soon. Their safety, being on a platform high in a tree, remains our top concern. We have closed the area to make sure nobody can trigger the traps they told us would collapse the platform,” DNR spokesperson Joe Smillie said in a statement.
To the protestor, Upthegrove still has the authority to act.
“Cancelling sales wasn’t an official campaign promise, but when you run on protecting forests and you have the power to protect forests and you have the power to cancel these kinds of sales, and you’re in the context where so many forests are being threatened, it’s just his responsibility to cancel the sale,” the protestor said.
DNR pointed to Upthegrove’s order as he came into office as commissioner that paused any new sale of mature, second-growth forests. The proposal from DNR says the Parched Timber Sale originally included more than 300 acres and was reduced because of 73 acres of old-growth stands. A hearing Thursday on the aforementioned lawsuit will determine if the sale is subject to a 90-day injunction, pausing the sale of the forest.
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