Dave Upthegrove

Can Washington state hold off harvesting older forests in the face of a projected $12 billion budget deficit without impacting local governments and school districts that get money from those timber sales? That’s the big question facing Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s new Public Lands commissioner. As one of his first acts on the job, Upthegrove did what he promised to do on the campaign trail — pause the harvest of timber from 70,000 to 80,000 acres of older forests that don’t yet qualify as “old-growth” but still are old enough to provide valuable habitat. Upthegrove said the pause on logging older forests would be offset by increasing harvests in younger forests. He also said the fact that timber values have gone up should dampen the blow.