Last week, state officials attempted to calm local fears that new protections for 77,000 acres of Washington state forestland will jeopardize timberland revenues for Lewis County.
Proceeds from the land help fund important services such as road maintenance and education.
A team of Washington state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials visited the Lewis County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, April 22.
The group, led by Assistant Region Manager for the Pacific Cascade Region Steve Ogden, gave the commissioners a comprehensive review of state trust lands, from the history of the lands to the revenue they provide to the county and local taxing districts.
The roughly hour-long meeting all led to the big question from Lewis County Commissioner Scott Brummer: How will the announced protection of 77,000 acres of state forestland impact Lewis County’s share of the revenue?
“That 4,700 (acres) that's here in Lewis County is obviously going to equate to dollars, whether it's today or down the road, and so that's an impact to not only our roads, but to those school districts that are going to be disproportionately affected,” Brummer said.
According to statements from DNR staff and the DNR website describing which lands will fall under the new restrictions, the order announced by Washington Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove will impact 4,790 acres of state trust land in Lewis County.
That combines a variety of trust land that help fund county-specific services and projects and state-level programs.
Ogden, the Lewis District Manager for DNR Andy Aschenbrenner and other members of the team said they don’t expect to see much of an impact, if any, in the near future. That is largely because the impacted forest lands in Lewis County were not scheduled for any major harvests in the coming years.
Others added that the lands under the new protections will not be clearcut again but can still generate some timber revenue from thinning and other harvesting techniques.
According to Aschenbrenner, who manages trust lands in Lewis, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties, the trust lands in the area have still been performing as expected before the new protections were announced in terms of revenue. He expects that revenue from the lands that most directly benefit Lewis County will still generate the expected revenue through the end of 2028.
Impacts beyond that are unclear.
“Looking into those fiscal years coming up, we're still on track to meet our deliverables,” Aschenbrenner said.
Last summer, Upthegrove announced a commissioner order that identified 77,000 acres of “structurally complex and older forests” in the western part of the state that would be protected from “traditional industrial logging.” The order doesn’t prohibit timber sales from the lands, but does prevent the more familiar model of timber harvest involving clearcutting, planting, thinning and repeating.
At the time, Upthegrove said the state would seek new ways to meet revenue goals from the state's timber trust lands, including selling carbon credits, acquiring additional timber lands and maximizing revenue from timber sales in other ways.
“These innovative strategies will generate new revenue for the agency and beneficiaries, showing that there are many ways that working forests can support local communities,” Upthegrove wrote in a public statement at the time.
The announcement was cause for concern for some, including officials in Lewis County who know that the county and many of its institutions benefit greatly from timber harvest revenue from state trust lands.
According to data from the DNR, Lewis County has benefited from state timber trust land revenues as much, or more, than any other county in the area over the last 10 years. The county saw the second highest revenue among counties in the area in 2025 receiving roughly $8.5 million from state trust lands.
And not all of that money goes straight to Lewis County. Much of it goes to junior taxing districts such as school districts, rural hospitals, cemetery districts and more.
DNR staff provided an example of a recent timber sale in Lewis County in an area near Elbe during the presentation. The sale, titled the Dew Dog Timber Sale, came at the price of roughly $1.45 million. That sale of a type of trust land, known as state forest transfer land, sends 25% of profits back to DNR for expenses and the remaining 75% to the county to fund its own programs and be distributed to other taxing districts.
That sale brought in roughly $1.1 million split between the county, its roads fund and many other beneficiaries. Just under $430,000 went to the Morton School District.
