DNR outlines plans for county timber sales

The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is putting together a plan that will yield Wahkiakum County government just over $1 million per year for the next three years in revenue from state managed trust timber land.

DNR officials reviewed the plans Tuesday with Wahkiakum commissioners Dan Cothren and Blair Brady (Commissioner Lisa Marsyla was absent because of family illness).

The timber trust revenue is an important part of the revenue for the county's Current Expense Fund, which finances most county offices.

St. Helens District Manager Steve Ogden said the county should receive $1.15 million in 2012 from the Hayduke Sale. Bidding will wrap up in May, with logging due this year.

The department will put another sale up for bid on May 30, and two more sales will go up for auction in June. A fourth sale is schedule in May, 2014.

Ogden said appraisals indicate the sales should generate an estimated $1.3 million in 2013 for the county and $1.06 in 2014.

The county will start receiving money this year from the state as compensation for timberland which has been locked up as critical habitat for endangered species such as the marbled murrelet.

DNR Regional Manager Eric Wisch said the county's first payment is on the agenda for the May meeting of the state's Board of Natural Resources.

The agency is trying to complete its management plan for the marbled murrelet, a sea bird which flies as much as 60 miles inland to nest on the limbs of large trees.

Wisch said meetings are planned for Cathlamet on May 1 and 8 to discuss the management plan and its borders.

Commissioner Dan Cothren said he is pleased with the DNR's efforts to manage for protection of the endangered species while looking out for the county's interests at the same time.

"I'm pretty happy with the objectives," he said. "I think the DNR is fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility with the objectives. I think we're on the right path."

Art Hyland, chair of the county's Property Rights Advisory Committee, asked Wisch if control and ownership of the county's trust timberland could be returned to the county.

"I don't know the specifics," Wisch said.

Cothren commented that he had approached legislators in the past and concluded that the legislature wouldn't approve the move.

"It would have to go through the legislature, and you'd have to have the stars line up," he said. "We've looked at that at other times. It's not going to happen."

Hyland also questioned whether anyone had actually seen a murrelet in the county timber trust land. Withholding the land from the harvest schedule adversely impacts the county, he said, and if there aren't actually any birds present, it's an absurd situation.

"It's the (federal) Endangered Species Act," Cothren said. "You don't have a lot of control over it. You have to come up with science to counter it."

"People need to understand that this is federally driven," Commissioner Brady commented.