Another 29,800 acres of timberland just got conserved under easement as working forest, the third phase in Columbia Land Trust’s project of protecting about 75,000 acres, sold by SDS lumber company in 2021. Columbia Land Trust hopes to conserve almost everything except the mill itself, buying the most important 15,000 acres of habitat outright. They hope to put the other 60,000 under conservation easements. In this case, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources will hold some of the rights over the 29,800 acres of land. It can be sold, but never developed; it must always remain working forest. This is the trust’s biggest project to date… SDS Lumber was the last family-owned, vertically-integrated (meaning it owned and operated most stages of its own supply chain) timber company in this part of the Northwest.