After Oso slide, with old growth in peril, timber sales go under microscope

ARLINGTON — About 13 miles from town, nature stood still as a forester for the state Department of Natural Resources measured the age of a Douglas fir near a timber sale site known as Stilly Revisited.

Raindrops clung to suspended branches of pine needles. A misty morning fog hung in the space above forest-floor ferns. Other DNR staff members quietly observed, too, while Jack Armstrong spun a screw-like object, called an increment borer, into the center of the tree.

At Stilly Revisited, forest activists are concerned about protecting old growth trees and — in a valley still healing from the deadly Oso mudslide in 2014 — preventing future slides. They also question how Stilly Revisited and three other pending timber sales in Snohomish County meet a DNR goal to conserve 10% to 15% of old growth and structurally complex forests in the department’s Northwest Washington region.

Mature and old growth forests are often “structurally complex”: varied vegetation on a landscape that allows the area to capture more carbon. These trees signify biological diversity, soil productivity and wildlife habitat. Since the 18th century, logging and other developments have largely contributed to the loss of about 72% of original old growth conifer forests in the Pacific Northwest.

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