Washington Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove was in Spokane this week. He stopped at Gonzaga University to talk with students about the world’s changing climate and their role in dealing with it.
And he met with Spokane Public Radio to talk about how to protect Department of Natural Resources lands at a time when the legislature is cutting budgets.
This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Dave Upthegrove: We have a tension in our state between a responsibility in our state constitution to manage many of our public lands in trust to make money for schools and local governments. That sometimes is in conflict with a larger responsibility we have to the public to ensure we're sustainably managing these lands, to protect plants and animals, to store carbon and protect our climate. And how to change a system that's been around since statehood in a way that still meets this multitude of public responsibilities.
DN: Should the state still worry about raising money from its lands for public schools and other things?
DU: We have to because it's in our state constitution. I think that's an outdated system. I think there would be opportunities to do more for habitat and climate and still generate wood products and benefit rural economies, but without the same kind of constraints that are placed on us. What we're trying to do at the department is to be thoughtful and innovate and diversify how we manage some of our most ecologically valuable lands.
In the meantime, we've created a lot of stability. We're continuing our timber harvests at the same levels. But we're also designating tens of thousands of acres of older forests that, as we move forward, we want to try new things on those lands to see if we can generate money through the carbon markets, to see if we can try some ecological forestry, like thinning for forest health, to see if we can get some new financing for the agency and acquire replacement timber lands. And trying a suite of options like that that allow us to do more for habitat, more for climate, while still meeting those broader economic responsibilities.
DN: The federal government has proposed selling off some federal lands, giving or selling to the states. And that's raising a lot of controversy, especially in the Mountain West states. What do you think about that?
DU: I believe public lands belong to we, the people. They're public lands and the idea of taking treasured national forests, national park lands, and selling them off to private interests for pure economic value, I think, really goes counter to the values of us as a nation.
DN: What if they deeded them to the state, though, where they remained in public trust?
DU: If they deeded them to us for free, absolutely.
I think in Washington state, we have a strong history of being good land managers to manage these lands on behalf of the public. Quite frankly, if they did go on the auction block, I would hope that we could find money in the state of Washington to acquire some of them. I don't have a sense that those proposals are moving forward very aggressively at the federal level. There was so much public push back.
I'm really worried. Even if the lands are still in public hands, if they've fired all of the federal employees who are responsible for managing and maintaining those lands, then we don't have access to them and you see national park closures and limited hours and lack of maintenance and bathrooms are closed.
I'm worried that the federal administration is denying a whole generation of young people the opportunity to get out and enjoy the outdoors the way I got to as a young Boy Scout. And so I'm really troubled when I hear those kind of proposals come from the federal administration.
DN: Is the state of Washington doing well enough at providing and maintaining, upgrading its public lands?
DU: No. One of my top priorities in the legislature right now is to make sure legislators understand the impacts of their proposed cuts to our recreation programs.
Both the House and the Senate budgets that were rolled out this last weekend include additional deep cuts to recreation maintenance. And if those aren't reversed through the budget process between now and the end of session, we're looking at closing about 10 or 11 recreation facilities and limiting the hours and services on many more.
We have more than 20 million unique visits per year to our recreation sites. The public is going to feel those cuts if we don't find a way to work with the legislature to mitigate them in the next few weeks.
DN: Legislators talk about, is that one of the priorities of government for which money should be spent? How do you argue that?
DU: Absolutely. Having a strong, clean, healthy environment and recreation opportunities contributes to the quality of life in this state. If we want to have good jobs and a strong economy, we need to keep Washington a great place to live.
People locate here. They bring jobs here, locate their businesses here because of that quality of life. People want to be able to go out and hunt and fish and hike and ride their horses, ride their motorcycles, ride their mountain bikes, and enjoy these lands that belong to all of us. These are tremendous assets and to not maintain this tremendous resource and then not provide the funding to maintain it, to clear the trails when trees fall on them, to clean the bathrooms, to have a spot to park your car at the trailhead, to enforce the rules so people don't damage indigenous sites and cultural sites, that takes money to maintain it. That is a core function of government that contributes so much to our quality of life, not just in rural areas, but people from suburban and urban areas flock to these recreation sites for their own well-being, for their families. It's one of the last affordable vacation things you can do as a family. It would be heartbreaking to see these opportunities get reduced at the same time the federal government is shutting down and restricting access on the federal lands in our state.
DN: Speaking of budget cuts, you've also been making the case that we need to restore wildfire funding for the state of Washington. And it sounds like you've had some success. Tell me about that challenge of making the case at a time when there's not enough money.
DU: Last year, within days of being sworn into this office during the legislative session, the legislature cut our wildfire funding and prevention money in half from $120 million over two years to $60 million. That was a $60 million cut to wildfire prevention response.
I spent this summer on a mission, particularly in western Washington, where the issue is not as salient, up and down the I-5 corridor, meeting one-on-one with legislators. We built a big coalition of organizations to support us and try to draw awareness in the public. And I'm very pleased to say that when the budgets came out this last week in both the House and the Senate, fully restored our $60 million in wildfire funding. And as long as that holds in both budgets, that's going to make a meaningful difference in our wildfire prevention response.
DN: The fact that western Washington has seen more wildfires, does that help make your case as you need to continue to do this?
DU: Everywhere I went in western Washington, I reminded them we saw the largest number of fires start in western Washington last year in history. We had the largest fire in western Washington in a generation with the Bear Gulch fire out on the Olympic Peninsula. And so I reminded folks this is an all of Washington problem, not just an eastern Washington problem.
DN: Given we've had meager snowpack here, especially in eastern Washington, northern Idaho, do you have a wildfire forecast?
DU: Snowpack itself is not an indicator of fire risk, but a low snowpack is one of the indicators of potential drought conditions.
The Department of Ecology works with an interagency group that Department of Natural Resources is part of to assess those drought conditions. And it's a little early in the season to have those assessments, but that group will look.
If we are at 75% or less of our usual moisture levels and if we believe that's going to have an impact on water users, then the Department of Ecology will declare drought conditions. The drier things are, the higher the risk of fire, both in the short term with the lack of moisture on the landscape, but in the long term with the impact on the health of those forests.
When you see trees die or be weaker and less resilient, then they attract disease, insect infestations. So I like to point out that a climate crisis drives a forest health crisis, drives a wildfire crisis. And we are seeing that over time. Generally speaking, drier conditions, less healthy forests, more wildfire risk.
DN: Would you argue the state's in better shape because of the investments made the last few years, that what could be a real bad year may not be as bad?
DU: Yeah, this wildfire prevention funding goes to things like forest health investments, where we will clear out the underbrush and thin the forests. We will position equipment. We will purchase the equipment we need. We will give grants to local fire districts for training and for equipment.
So all throughout the response system, this funding goes to work on our landscapes and to local partners because these fires are really expensive to put out. So if a fire starts and we can get there quickly with local partners, put it out before it's catastrophic. We save lots of money and we protect property.
