As a rule, environmentalists and tree farmers rarely agree on much.
However, during a tour of Rick Dunning's tree farm Wednesday, representatives of both groups looked beyond an old clearcut and spotted a threat to the environment more lasting than any single tree harvest a smattering of houses amid the otherwise green landscape.
Homes replace trees, pets displace wildlife, and decorative shrubs crowd out native vegetation.
Besides turning working forests into oversized homesites, many of these newcomers bring their urban sensibilities into the woods.
That means tree farmers who profit from selling pieces of their rural property for low-density housing can then find themselves with neighbors who feel they have a stake in "saving" the forest next door.
"You're voted out of existence," one tree farmer ruefully observed. "The more people we bring out here, the more problems the tree farmer has."
During a two-day meeting of the state Forest Practices Board, which concluded Thursday in Vancouver, board members groped for ways to enforce environmental regulations while also helping to keep small-woodland owners in business. Small-woodland owners from Southwest Washington appealed for relief to keep them in business.
"The alternative to a tree farm is what?" said Carl Ruestig, president of the Clark County chapter of the Washington Farm Forestry Association. "We need your help, not more regulations."
Environmentalists say the state's forest practice rules are necessary as a minimum standard to protect public resources such as clean water, wildlife and fish, and that they aren't willing to ease those regulations. At the same time, they acknowledge the need to encourage tree farmers to resist the temptation to sell their properties for environmentally harmful land uses.
"Environmentalism is sometimes a blunt tool," said Peter Goldman, executive director of the Washington Forest Law Center. "What we're seeing here is we can't afford to be blunt."
Goldman conceded that state Forest and Fish regulations adopted in 1999 disproportionately affect small-woodland owners who lack the land base, legal teams and political power of the large industrial timberland owners. Because owners of small woodlands hold many of the most environmentally sensitive properties near streams, Goldman said, it's even more imperative to keep them in business.
"We've got to keep those folks on the land," Goldman said.
Goldman said that's why his group and the Washington Environmental Council is collaborating with the small-woodland owners' organization to draft legislation that could provide incentives to hang onto their land.
One idea would establish a statewide system for woodland owners to transfer development rights, for a fee, to developers who would then be allowed to build at higher densities within cities.
At the same time, tree farmers said they, too, recognize the need to cooperate with regulators.
"We recognize that without a partnership with this board and other state agencies, we will fail," Dunning said during a hearing Thursday at the Vancouver Convention Center.
Ken Miller, an Olympia-area tree farmer who serves as president of the WFFA, noted that Dunning and other tree farmers across the state genuinely love their land and want to conserve it even in the face of growing market pressure to sell. They don't want a hard time about actively managing their land.
"Rick talks tough, but he's really like most of us," Miller said, during Wednesday's tour of Dunning's tree farm. "He's a closet environmentalist."The Columbian
