DNR: No Capital Budget puts Forests in Jeopardy

With no capital budget in place, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources says that leaves forests in the Evergreen State in jeopardy. The proposed budget included $15 million to remove trees struck by insect blight, disease or drought.

"A century of mismanaged forests has clogged our forests with dead, dry and sick trees that make our summer wildfire seasons as destructive as we've seen in the past decade," said Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz. "We need this funding to undo this mess by thinning these trees from our forests. This problem is only getting worse, and the longer we wait the more we'll pay both for the restoration and for the increasing costs of suppressing wildfires."

Dead, dry and sick trees can add to the devastation of a wildfire and DNR officials say not thinning those out makes the problem worse. According to a DNR survey, 2.7 million acres of Washington forests are filled with dead and diseased trees.

The $15 million dollars that DNR was expecting to receive would have funded a number of forest restoration projects, including the thinning of 15,000 acres of forests in four fire-prone regions; dozens of new Firewise communities; replanting of forests that burned in recent years' fires, and putting veterans to work on forest restoration projects.