Saturday, November 14, 2015  Dan McShane

The Forest Practices Board met on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 (fpb_mtgpacket). One part of the meeting was to consider adopting an update to the Forest Board Manual Section 16 Guidelines for Evaluating Potentially Unstable Slopes and Landforms. The Manual is not a hard fast rule but the fact that it is official guidance suggests that deviating from the guidance may be challenged. Hence, timber industry wants to minimize specific language in the Manual while safety and conservation minded folks would like a stronger worded guidance to ensure forest practices that may impact potentially unstable slopes gets a thorough assessment. The conservation part of the guidance is that a significant motive of forest practice rules is to protect fish habitat. Landslide frequency and magnitude can have a harmful impact on fish habitat. […]

Read Dan’s complete post on Reading the Washington Landscape here.