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First Results Out From State Environmental Agency About How Well Fish and Clean Water Standards Are Being Met in the Forest

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 February 2007, 21:00 CST

OLYMPIA, Wash., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Washington's Forest Practices Board (Board) will examine results of a draft compliance report for the first time, at their meeting tomorrow. The draft report will show how well fish and clean water regulations are being implemented on the ground. The goal of the report is to identify areas where private forest practices meet or exceed regulations, where they fall short, and where there is a need for more clarification of the rules.

Forest practices are highly regulated by the state's Forests & Fish Law, which requires forest landowners to make major upgrades to road systems to prevent sediment from entering streams, protection of steep slopes and requires larger buffers of trees alongside streams, to keep water cool for fish.

Of the 280 forest practices activities examined in the report, 80% were in compliance with regulations, and in Western Washington, riparian management regulations were exceeded 23% of the time, meaning landowners left more trees for protection than the rules require. Small forest landowners alone exceeded Western Washington riparian management regulations 33% of the time.

A draft report was circulated to stakeholders for review. Washington Forest Protection Association's (WFPA) Director of Forest Management, Pete Heide, said, "WFPA members will not be satisfied with less than 100% compliance." WFPA members are pleased with the progress shown in the compliance report and find it a valuable tool to identify areas for improvement. Pete will testify before the Board at tomorrow's meeting.

Of those activities that were not in compliance, the magnitude of problems is very low, or "trivial" as stated in the report. For example, only 2 of the 280 activities were deemed significant enough to require referral to Department of Natural Resources' regional office.

The report focuses on two major rule groups that have the greatest potential to impact fish habitat and clean water: 1) timber harvesting and 2) road construction and maintenance. These two groups of activities account for about 60% of all forest practices regulations, and are the heart of the Forests & Fish Law.

Since this is the first report, more years of data will be needed to make broad, statistically valid conclusions, the margin of error is +/- 10%.

Opportunities exist to continually improve rule compliance and on the ground implementation through training and clarification. As the report notes, compliance was relatively low where rules were vague or lacked guidance.

The Forest Practices Board will hold it's meeting on February 14, 2007 at 9 a.m., in room 172 of the Natural Resources Building in Olympia, WA.

Washington Forest Protection Association is the trade association for timber landowners. Our members are large, private industrial forest landowners in Washington State, representing about 4.2 million acres of land. We were founded in 1908, and have long been the voice for the industry in the political, policy and public arenas. We work to achieve stable forest regulations through the use of science in development of forest policy and our preferred method to accomplish this is through a collaborative process with key stakeholders.

Washington Forest Protection Association

CONTACT: Cindy Mitchell, +1-360-791-9372, or cmitchell@wfpa.org, or PeteHeide, +1-360-352-1500, or pheide@wfpa.org

Web site: http://www.forestsandfish.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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