Eight months after Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove entered office and paused logging sales in older forests on state land, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources has identified 77,000 acres to set aside for conservation.

Called “structurally complex forests” by the Department of Natural Resources and “legacy forests” by some conservationists, these older forests aren’t quite old enough to qualify for old-growth protections but are biologically diverse and naturally resistant to wildfire.

Under Upthegrove’s plan, 29,000 acres of the forests will remain available for harvest. Most of the roughly two-dozen timber sales paused will proceed.

“Doing this will allow us to continue to nurture and steward these forests, but in innovative and diverse ways that do more for climate, more for habitat, and more for the communities we serve,” Upthegrove said in an interview ahead of signing Tuesday’s directive.

“I think it will be the biggest step forward in forest conservation in a generation,” he added.

Upthegrove campaigned last year on protecting this class of forests.

His ideas drew support from environmental advocates who argue that swaths of these older trees are dwindling in western Washington. But industry was opposed, making a case that larger, older timber is needed for certain wood products, and that pulling the lands back from logging would hurt jobs and mills.

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