Sen. Kevin Van De Wege

Two former state officials’ recent proposal to discontinue timber harvests on trust lands managed by the Department of Natural Resources would be bold, ambitious and a game-changer.

It would also be a disaster — not just for our post-pandemic economy but for our efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

I don’t say this lightly. As chair of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee, as a member of the Senate Ways & Means Committee that writes our state’s budgets, and as a longtime representative of the 24th District who has helped shape sensible timber policies for years, I believe the fallout that would result from decreeing our trust lands off-limits cannot be overstated.

First, this would steadily eliminate thousands of family-wage jobs on which our rural economies and communities west of the Cascades rely. 

At the same time, it would continually erode more than $180 million in non-tax revenue generated by the harvest of our trust lands for public schools and other community services, including the badly needed seismic retrofitting of public schools across our state, keeping kids safe. Cities, counties and local fire districts also depend on funds from this account.