Back in 2021, the SDS Lumber and Timber Company’s sale of its extensive mill properties and nearly 100,000 acres of Pacific Northwest forest reserves to sent a shockwave through the Columbia River Gorge as well as the global timber industry. Now, through a complex partnership agreement, nearly all of the forests formerly owned by SDS in southwestern Washington are remaining open to logging, while being protected against future commercial or residential development.  The Columbia Land Trust has announced a $36 million award from the U.S. Forest Service that will go toward establishing a new conservation easement on a 29,000-acre piece of former SDS Lumber land… Keeping timberlands as “working forests,” rather than carving up the land into commercial or residential parcels, is considered a major conservation win, according to Columbia Land Trust Executive Director Meg Rutledge.