The central pond at Mclane Nature Trail Park.
I recently received an email from Friends Of Mclane (FOM), a recently formed wetlands advocacy group. They are bringing attention to a plan by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to lease a couple parcels of timber in the State’s Capitol Forest. The proposed lease of the two parcels, called Bears U1 and U2, is aimed at a start date of 2025, with cutting to begin sometime in 2027.
The land involved first entered the State of Washington’s inventory of assets in 1889 when it was granted Statehood. The initial parcel of 5,000 acres became The Capitol State Forest by legislative act in 1933. The act also specified that the property was to be managed in perpetuity as a commercial forest.
Initially a total of 14,000 acres of land ended up being involved in the establishment of the forest, but over time the holding has grown to include 25,000 more. The 182 acres involved in the Bears leases are more than likely part of the initial trust, and just a small portion of the entire repository. The acreages were logged the last time in the 1980s-1990s, which means it’s a mature forest, but not old-growth by any stretch.
What sort of involvement I’ll have with the group I’m not sure. The founding members are neighbors, although not close ones. I share their general concerns in many ways; but the organization itself is just getting started and has a hard task ahead of it. Launching a watershed advocacy group isn’t as easy in these politically complex and relatively unfriendly times as it once was in the 70’s and 80’s, when the Clean Water Act was new, the popularity of environmental protest was young, and environmental litigation strong.
I can see one issue in particular that might create some initial and long term problems for the group: Emphasis on the potential impact of the leases on property values. Arguments from that point of view are hard to mount and even harder to sustain. If the group focuses too much on that angle it runs the risk of inviting the dismissive label of NIMBY. That label once established is extremely hard to overcome.
For most people not living in this particular area of Olympia, probably the only rock-bottom issue here may be the potential impact on salmon and their protections. Improper logging practices have been a major concern for quite some time, particularly logging in landslide country. Washington's DNR does a great job of making much of their research data available on the internet, and the LIDAR maps of landside prone areas and other geological info are fascinating material. The slopes of at least some portions of the Capital Forest have been LIDAR mapped and would be well worth a study to see if either of the Bears proposed sites are high-risk. That would not automatically put the skids to those projects, but it would probably increase the attention given to the site work.
Mclane Creek is a lovely gem of a salmon stream and certainly deserves all the attention and care it can get. It has already been heavily impacted on some reaches by human action and suffers significantly from the Urban Stream Syndrome. It would be a shame to see it further degraded.