Public lands commissioner calls on Legislature to approve, fund conservation of state forests

Washington Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove is dialing back his goal to protect 77,000 acres of older state forests from timber harvest even as he asks lawmakers to give him more tools to do so. 

On Thursday, the first-term commissioner dropped the figure to 55,000 acres, blaming the reduction in part on mapping errors.

While those forests are now exempt from logging through 2030, Upthegrove is banking on the state Legislature granting his Department of Natural Resources broader authority in how it generates revenue from its management of state lands so that those acres do not eventually end up in a timber sale.  

“I know there are those who are upset that we haven’t moved fast enough, or that I’ve had to adjust my plans,” Upthegrove said in a press conference this week. “But it takes time to change a system that has been in place since statehood.”

Land management is only one concern of Upthegrove’s. Another is the agency’s internal budget problems. A key account that funds forestry work was on track to go negative by midsummer. The agency deferred work on some lands to keep the account positive, according to agency officials. 

“The real challenge is that the status quo business of forestry in Washington has been leading us towards financial crisis for over a decade,” Upthegrove said Thursday.  

The lands commissioner leads the Department of Natural Resources and oversees nearly 6 million acres of state public land, including about 3 million acres of “trust lands” that produce revenue – mostly from logging – for schools, counties and other parts of government.

On the campaign trail, Upthegrove promised to preserve older, but not necessarily old-growth, forests on state land. Activists have fought in court and bureaucratic arenas to stop logging on these lands, which they’ve dubbed “legacy forests.” This and other ideas he put forward won him support among environmental and conservation groups. 

During his first day in office in January 2025, Upthegrove paused nearly 30 timber sales, buying time for him to assess which lands were suitable for protection. 

By August 2025, he called for setting aside 77,000 acres from the logging rotation. 

The reduction to 55,000, he told the Standard, came after further analysis of the agency’s maps. Many parcels included in the original figure comprised just one acre or less. Others were already protected in one way or another, he said. 

Those 55,000 acres of state forests weren’t included in the agency’s five-year harvest plan; they were scheduled for logging after 2030, he said. 

The change displeased some conservationists.

“He got elected on a campaign that was all about changing DNR. And now that he’s in DNR, he’s telling the public it’s not his job to change DNR. It’s actually the legislature’s,” said Joshua Wright, program director of the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition.

Wright has spent years fighting to protect older state forests from logging. He’s been on the grounds of over 200 state timber sales, documenting old growth stands and rare plant communities at risk of logging, he said. The Legacy Forest Defense Coalition has sued to slow or block at least 30 of the department’s timber sales.  

In Upthegrove’s view for managing state forests, there are alternatives to raising revenue from state lands that don’t require logging. The department can lease its lands. It is preparing a proposal to allow conservation easements that would be presented to the Board of Natural Resources for consideration in the spring, he said.  

The idea is that the department could lease out older forests to municipalities, tribes or nonprofits for a similar price to what they would receive if sold in a timber auction. Trust beneficiaries – counties and local taxing districts like schools and fire districts – would be compensated for the value of the forests’ conservation. 

For more than 20 years, the department has pushed legislation to state lawmakers that would broaden revenue opportunities on state lands, Upthegrove said. Last year, the proposal didn’t advance out of committee, the first step in passing this type of legislation. 

If it did, the agency could enter state forests into regulatory carbon markets, in which companies could buy allowances to offset their pollution. Weyerhaeuser, one of the largest private owners of timber land, generated $119 million from carbon markets last year, Upthegrove noted. 

The department is already evaluating state forest lands for potential carbon projects and estimating how much revenue they could generate, he added. 

“We want to be ready to act when the necessary authority is finally secured,” Upthegrove said. 

Upthegrove also called on the state to invest in forest conservation by funding the agency’s conservation programs, which he called “vital, proven tools we can and must use more aggressively.”

In the future, land not included in the 55,000 acres could be protected from logging. Upthegrove said he’s less focused on the amount of state acres suitable for protection; he’s more focused on urging the Legislature to give him the tools that would allow the department to finance conservation and ecological management. Meanwhile, the timber industry isn’t complaining about Upthegrove’s announcement.

“It wasn’t that big of a change,” said Heath Heikkila, director of government affairs for the American Forest Resource Council. 

The real issue, Heikkila said, is that the agency logged 27% below what it targeted during the last fiscal year. 

In managing and generating revenue on state lands, the agency sets a volume of timber to be logged over a period of time. During the last fiscal year, it fell short, harvesting only 388 million board feet instead of 460 million. 

“I don’t think these gimmicks he’s chasing are going to prove sustainable, either for DNR’s budget or for these rural communities,” Heikkila said.