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DNR briefs committee on forest-practices rules, riparian buffers, small-landowner incentives and resilience programs
Summary
Department of Natural Resources staff presented an overview of forest-practices rules, permitting, enforcement, small-landowner incentive programs, the programmatic Habitat Conservation Plan, and forest-resilience work including prescribed fire, Good Neighbor Authority projects and workforce development.
The Department of Natural Resources gave a detailed briefing on Jan. 29 to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on forest practices, permitting, small-landowner programs and forest resilience.
Saboor Jawad, forest regulation division manager, told the committee that the 1974 Forest Practices Act (chapter 76.09 RCW) directs the Forest Practices Board to adopt forest-practices rules and that DNR implements and enforces those rules. He summarized elements in the rules, including riparian management zones (RMZs) with three subzones and buffers that can extend up to 200 feet from a stream edge in some conditions. Jawad said, "Most applications must be approved within 30 days, and if not approved within 30 days, they automatically get approved." He also provided agency enforcement figures for the most recent fiscal year: DNR processed about 3,555 forest-practices applications statewide and issued 36 notices to comply, 21 stop-work orders and three civil penalties in fiscal year 2024.
Jawad described a long-term, programmatic Habitat Conservation Plan established with federal agencies (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries and the Environmental Protection Agency) that provides incidental-take permits for landowners using forest-practices rules; that agreement dates to 2006 and is structured to provide assurances when the rules are implemented.
He also described DNRs small-forest-landowner assistance and incentive programs: a riparian easement purchase program (FRE/T program in the transcript), a family-forest fish-passage cost share program, and a rivers-and-habitat open-space easement program. Jawad said the state planned to purchase 76 riparian easements in the biennium, clear a historical backlog by June and had received 44 new applications; the family-forest fish-passage program is targeting 35 barrier corrections this biennium and has corrected 471 barriers to open roughly 300 miles of fish habitat since inception.
Jen Watkins, forest resilience division manager, followed with a presentation of the agencys strategic planning, science and implementation work on forest health. Watkins described Washingtons 22 million acres of forest, a 20-year forest-health strategic plan for Eastern Washington, and the use of landscape-level science to prioritize treatments for wildfire risk reduction, drought mitigation and resilience. She outlined treatments supported by DNR: commercial and noncommercial thinning, prescribed fire, reforestation, aquatic restoration and road maintenance on federal lands. Watkins highlighted a Good Neighbor Authority project in Chelan County where the state implemented 4,000 acres of risk-reduction thinning and said those areas will be followed by prescribed fire this biennium.
Watkins also described workforce development for prescribed fire and restoration work, including certified-burner training, prescribed-burn associations, and programs that partner with tribes, federal land managers and local contractors to scale implementation. She noted the agency tracks treatments in a publicly available forest-health tracker and produces monitoring reports to evaluate whether treatments reduce risk and increase resilience.
Committee members asked technical questions about RMZ width and site-class factors (Representative Schmidt), easement purchases and whether easements confer public access (Representative Morgan), planting and harvest restrictions within buffers (Representative Springer), workforce programs including use of incarcerated crews and reentry crews (Representative Morgan and Representative McClintock), and federal-state cooperation on federal-lands implementation (Representative Springer and Representative Engel). Watkins and Jawad answered or offered to follow up with additional details.
Ending: DNR offered to provide deeper briefings on specific topics and to follow up on outstanding questions about workforce programs and particular local concerns. The briefing provided lawmakers with program numbers and technical context they said they would use as the Legislature considers bills touching forest regulation, wildfire response and landowner assistance.
