Forest Practices

How to Read a Forest Practice Permit

This is where we are recording all the logging permits issued in Island County for your review. They take a bit of getting used to, so below you will find a  Guide to Interpreting Forest Practice Applications.

First, lets deal with the alphabet soup. When you can’t figure out what an acronym means, go to the Alphabet Soup page, and with luck you’ll find help there. 

In most instances, the first thing you will see when you open the document will be the Office Review Checklist. This is a quick summary created by staff at DNR.

In the top right corner will be the FPA/N #. Pretty straightforward. This number follows the application throughout the process, and DNR files all applications by these numbers, which makes them very hard to find otherwise.

Right below that are: Received Date, Comments Due Date, and Decision Due Date. Different kinds of permits have different comment periods. If you intend to comment on an application, you need to pay particular attention to those dates.

FP Forester: Each area is administered by a Forest Practices Forester, and each forester has a convenient number. The forester for Whidbey Island is Loren Wheeler, and his number is 1530.

Shutdown Zone: not terribly relevant to us, but the state is divided into zones for purposes of shutting down logging if the weather gets too hot and dry.

FPA/N Classification: Here’s where we get some real information. It is marked with [ ] II [ ] III [ ] IVG [ ] IVS, and one of these will be checked. How a permit is handled depends very much on which one of these is marked. Forest practices come in 4 different classes. 

You will notice that there is no I to check off. That is because a class I forest practice does not require a permit. If you log less than 5000 board feet (+/- 1 log truck load), do not sell the timber, and build no more than 600 ft of road, you need no permit. 

A Class II permit presumes that there will be, by definition, no environmental impacts. These are usually smaller areas, with no steep slopes or wetlands or endangered species. No development is allowed for 6 years after a Class II logging. There is no review period. The applicant simply fills in the form and 5 days later they may begin logging.

A Class III permit acknowledges that there may be damage to the environment, but by definition it is not bad enough to warrant environmental review. No development is allwed for 6 years after a Class III logging. The review period is usually 30 days, but if it is a particularly bad proposal, review can go as long as 45 days. 

A Class IV-G (G= general) is a development permit. DNR does not issue these until Island County approves the underlying development proposal. By the time a development proposal makes it as far as the FPA, its pretty much too late to stop or condition it. Theoretically, Island County did all the necessary review in the development permit stage, caught any wetlands, steep slopes, etc, and placed conditions on the underlying permit which DNR will then honor. Most of the permits issued are IV-G.

Class IV-S (S=special) is so rare that in nearly 20 years I’ve only seen 2 or 3 of them. Class IV-S applies to logging so godawful that it really shouldn’t happen at all. Even when we think a logging proposal falls into this category, DNR gives it a lower classification. 

RMAP Exempt: this refers to whether or not the landowner intends to build forest roads.

Landowner Name: pretty self evident.

WRIA: Water Resource Inventory Area. All ours are Island County

WAU: Watershed Administrative Unit: Ours are either Whidbey or Camano.

Legal Description: N/2 4-29-2E.

The entire US is divided into Sections, Townships, and Ranges. Ranges are north-south strips 6 miles wide. Townships are east-west strips 6 miles wide. The square formed by a Township and a Range is also known as a Township, and it contains 6 x 6 miles = 36 square miles. Each of those square miles is a Section. What we can read in the above legal description is that someone proposes development in the north half of Range 2 East, Township 29, Section 4. All of Island County lies within Range 1 W, 1, 2, 3, and 4 E, and from Township 28 to 34. The particular location given above, N/2 4-29-2E is just east of hwy 525 around Mutiny Bay Road. It is useful to get a road map and mark off the township and range lines.

Activity Type: fairly self evident. In the example, Harvest____6 acres is marked, along with Rd Constr_____2100 ft.

Alternative Prescriptions refers to proposed logging plans which don’t fit DNR’s standard pattern. When that happens, a landowner hires a forester to explain why its a good idea not to follow the standard rules. They’re quite rare in Island County.

Resource Review: There is a great long list of resources which could be impacted by the proposal. All of ours have [ ] Saltwater Islands marked, for obvious reasons. There actually is a special rule for saltwater islands which we are proud to have pushed through, which limits clearcuts on islands to 40 acres maximum. The others that we often see marked are [ ] Unstable Slopes and [ ] Hydric Soils. Unstable slopes are pretty self explanatory. In most cases these are areas where it is pretty obvious that if the trees are cut there is likely to be serious erosion or even a major slide. DNR generally issues the permits anyway. Hydric Soils are wetlands. DNR has no objection to the logging of wetlands. We have seen major wetlands clearcut and left to grow back to thistles with DNR’s blessings.

Associated Documents - One file with the FPA/N at the region office

[ ] Conversion Option Harvest Plan. This is a ‘get out of jail free’ card for the landowner. Under a COHP the landowner declares that s/he isn’t sure about future development, so will log under a Class III permit now, but hold out the option for future development anyway.

[ ] Road Maintenance and Abandonment Plan. For serious forestry companies, this is the plan for where they will build logging roads, and which ones they will put to bed (abandon) for the next 50+ years until the next “crop” of trees is ready for harvest.

[ ] TRAX Report. TRAX is a system for mapping and tracking endangered, threatened, and sensitive species of animals. All FPAs are put through the TRAX system. It usually comes up empty, but we do see hits for eagles.

[ ] SEPA checklist/documents. SEPA is the State Environmental Policy Act, and in the act there is a checklist which must be filled out for development