We spent millions restoring a vital WA waterway. Why is DNR going to log nearby? | Opinion

When I learned Washington’s Department of Natural Resources intended to log 125 acres of woods near the Elwha River, I was incredulous. Taxpayers spent hundreds of millions of federal dollars removing a dam there so salmon could return, and now Washington state was going to log nearby. Really?

I had to see for myself.

In August, I hiked upon taxpayer-funded trails to where the Elwha dam had pinched the river. I wended through fir, cedar, alder and maple — even the occasional madrona, perhaps planted by a bird within the carpet of moss and mulch. A branch-woven canopy dozens of feet above the damp understory filtered transient light onto thimbleberries’ red buttons and huckleberries’ pink gems. I delved into thigh-high waves of Oregon grape, salal and sword ferns, just as I had 60 years ago as a kid growing up at the base of the Olympic Mountains.

Back then, forests like the one near the Elwha River were commonplace. Today they are disappearing. Yet, for $656,800, the price the state received for the trees, DNR hopes to log this one.

Seventy-five percent of that revenue will go into local governments’ budgets. But if we are to ensure Washington’s glacial rivers remain suitable habitats for salmon and steelhead, we shouldn’t be making decisions based on budgets.

Instead, we should focus on the effect logging this year could have on a glacial river decades from now.

The Department of Natural Resources could kickstart a new approach to protecting glacial rivers right now — by negotiating the recission of the Elwha River Power Plant logging contract.

It should, because decades fly by.

In my 30s, I learned to climb on Mount Anderson, south of the Elwha River. Only three decades later, the Anderson glacier is gone.

A friend who hiked up there a few days ago texted me a photo of what it looks like now. I’d heard the glacier had melted, but seeing his photo was a gut punch.

I remember climbing a snow-filled chute. I recall gazing down upon a glacial lake, and a stream that plummeted over Earth’s edge, nourishing the Quinault. My friend’s photo showed a cavity of heat-absorbing rocks.

Last year, The News Tribune in Tacoma reported that half of the Olympic mountains’ glaciers had melted. In 50 years most will be gone.

Unless we act to preserve the rivers those glaciers feed, the glaciers’ disappearance could threaten salmon and steelhead habitat, orca populations, lush forests and drinking water supplies for cities like Port Angeles.

Currently, habitat plans attempt to protect rivers. For example, logging is prohibited within 170 feet of the Elwha’s river bank. Going above and beyond requirements, DNR doesn’t plan to log closer than 250 feet. Recently, a forester suggested that setting back more than that would have little effect on river temperatures.

But that is now, when glaciers still send cool water into the river.

What will happen to river temperatures and salmon runs when the glaciers are gone and summer in-stream flows fall?

That’s when we will need the tall masts of older trees and the full sails of their canopies to capture and drip the Pacific’s moisture onto the forest floor, eventually into the river.

Even if current science and habitat plans permit harvesting trees more than 250 feet from the river, we shouldn’t roll the dice, hoping that in 50 years replants will be tall and thick enough to capture the moisture the rivers need.

Instead, the state and federal governments should designate a mile of public land along both banks of the Olympic Peninsula’s glacial rivers, from the national park boundary to salt water, as “Ecological Reserves.” These two-mile-wide Ecological Reserves would be managed to maximize fire resiliency, carbon sequestration, in-stream flows, public access and habitat for all species — not just endangered ones.

I want to be clear: I support logging. Economically, we need the lumber and paper — and the people of Washington desperately need the family-wage jobs the industry creates. Local governments also depend on the funds they receive from DNR timber sales for schools, fire departments, roads and libraries. Scientifically, logging can enhance fire resiliency and carbon sequestration. Personally, in the 1950s, my late father-in-law began his career as a forester near the Elwha.

But when my father-in-law was assessing forest stands, glaciers in the Olympic’s tongued long and deep, cooling rivers where salmon swam thick. Sadly, that is not our Washington today. The rules that determined where we logged decades ago, and even today, are unlikely to work decades from now. That’s why creating Ecological Reserves along the peninsula’s glacial rivers is so essential.

Understandably, this sort of talk unsettles local governments that depend on DNR timber sale revenues, but just because in the past local governments lost out when DNR canceled a logging project doesn’t mean that must happen in the future.

Washington residents pay the highest gas prices in the country to raise money for climate projects. Certainly, some of the hundreds of millions that have been collected could be spent keeping local governments whole while adapting rivers, forests and communities to disappearing glaciers.

Last July, I climbed Mount Olympus, the source of a few of the peninsula’s rivers, and saw how much of its Blue Glacier is gone. Where the ascent route once would have taken us up and across the glacier, we had to descend several hundred feet of scree and tumbling rock before stepping upon what remained.

In 50 years, when the flanks of Olympus are cavities of heat-absorbing rocks, when its blue ice can be seen only in old photographs, what will become of the peninsula’s grand glacial rivers?

The damage we’ve done — and the damage we’re doing now to the glaciers — cannot be reversed.

Still, the hope that we can save the rivers is why I returned to the Elwha forest last week. I bushwhacked through trees spray painted to indicate logging boundaries — designating which trees will be cut, and which ones won’t. I hiked to where the forest met the river, where the Earth dissolved beneath me and I could peer down upon it.

There, where taxpayers have already spent hundreds of millions restoring salmon runs, is an appropriate place for DNR to launch a new approach to saving our glacial rivers.

It’s not too late; logging won’t start for a few weeks.

This story was originally published October 11, 2023 at 5:00 AM.