Satsop Forest Management

The Satsop Industrial Site is a 1,500-acre complex including more than 400 acres of heavy industrial park originally built as a nuclear power plant that was mothballed before becoming operational. In addition to being an industrial site which willspur economic development in our region, the property also includes 1,100 acres of very high quality forest land. The forest land at the Satsop site is a part of one of the world’s most productive ecosystems. For much of the 20th century, timber management was based upon the notion that clearcutting was the only feasible way to manage these Douglas-fir/western hemlock forests.

With this objective, the goal for managing the Satsop Demonstration Forest is to maintain and/or restore the habitats, which have historically existed on the landscape to ensure that no species become threatened or extinct. In areas where mature forests are limited, the priority is to restore stand structural diversity. Other priority habitats are riparian areas and wetlands. These goals will be achieved while maintaining an economically viable forest management plan.

Next Steps

Columbia-Pacific RC&EDD will work with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on the idea of issuing any forest landowner a certificate of mitigation for undertaking late seral-type forest management. The landowner would then be able to sell and contractually undertake the mitigation for an entity needing such mitigation. Since LMS is set-up with a 5-year monitoring plan, carbon and wildlife mitigation contracts can be monitored on 5-year increments to make sure the contract agreements are being accomplished.

More Information

The myriad of management options that have been developed for the Satsop Demonstration Forest can be viewed at the College of Forest Resources website
http://lms.cfr.washington.edu/lmscasestudy.shtml.

Management Goals

The goal of the Satsop Sustainable Forestry Demonstration Project is to utilize the 1,100 acres of forest as a research and educational area for innovative forestry. By modeling sustainable forestry practices, the project will provide forest landowners opportunities to see, learn and integrate these practices into their forestland management operations. The project has three component parts. The first component was the development of a Landscape Management System (LMS) for the forested areas at Satsop. The development of that plan also provided educational opportunities for participants who were able to generate their own visions of the forestland management regimes. Agreement of applied forest management practices is currently being developed. As the practices are implemented on the ground, outreach and educational demonstrations will be offered to forestland owners.

LMS and the Satsop Forest Plan can be viewed at the University of Washington website. The University of Washington, College of Forest Resources is developing the forestry plan utilizing the Landscape Management Systems approach.