The battle continues over a Washington state forest practices rule that critics argue will devastate working forests and supporters believe is essential to protecting water quality in the state's rivers and streams.
The Washington Forest Protection Association (WFPA) and Washington Farm Forestry Association (WFFA) announced Friday that they would formally appeal a recent legal decision that upheld a buffer rule passed by the state's Forest Practices Board in November of last year.
The rule requires that a greater area of trees be left to grow during logging operations near waterways. Critics have said the rule will lock up 200,000 acres of timber in Western Washington, including Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.
On Friday, Aug. 21, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Schaller ruled to uphold the forest practices buffer rule, putting a very temporary end to a legal challenge that began shortly after the rule’s creation last year.
“This is not a conservation win if the state’s own record shows limited fish benefits and immense harm to working forests and rural communities,” WFPA Executive Director Jason Spadaro said.
In mid-November 2025, the Washington state Forest Practices Board narrowly approved a new “Type NP Buffer” rule expanding required no-cut zones around non-fish bearing streams in the state, taking additional trees and land out of timber production. The policy makes special rules for larger buffer zones at points where those headwater streams empty into larger fish bearing streams.
Timber advocates large and small warn the rule puts new financial pressures on timber farmers that will spread across the industry.
“Washington forest-products manufacturers rely on private forests for roughly 73 percent of their timber,” reads a news release from the WFPA. “Further reductions would ripple through mills, workers, local businesses and timber-dependent rural communities, and increase fire risk as these no-touch buffers accumulate wildfire fuel.”
The WFPA has predicted the decision will amount to between $1 billion and $1.8 billion in expected timber revenue lost. A cost benefit analysis from the Washington state Department of Natural Resources estimates the financial losses in Western Washington at $320 million to $1 billion.
The associations argued that the studies behind the new rule did not show enough evidence of diminishing water quality to justify the economic impacts to forest land owners.
Environmental advocates such as Conservation Northwest, which intervened in the legal battle in support of the Washington state Department of Ecology, celebrated the recent ruling as a victory.
“Headwater streams are the roots of our watersheds,” the nonprofit said in a news release. “They provide the cold, clean water that downstream rivers need to support salmon, aquatic wildlife and thriving local communities. Without forested buffers along these small streams, water temperatures rise, sediment washes in, and critical fish habitats suffer.”
Since the initial decision to implement the rule, both sides have argued that science is on their side. The rulemaking process was justified in theory by a series of water quality studies that first yielded results in 2018, showing changes to water quality. Conservation groups and state agencies have said the rule is essential to slow water temperature increases.
However, some on the Forest Practices Board have questioned the process of the rulemaking since that point. Critics of the rule continue to allege that the state did not show that water quality or temperatures had not changed enough to warrant the action.
With that, they argue the new rule violates the Forests and Fish Agreement established in 1999 that created conservation rules around forest practices, including stream buffers.
“Landowners have held up their commitment,” states an announcement from WFPA. “They reserved 764,000 acres of productive forestland at a cost of more than $2.3 billion and fixed thousands of culverts to open 6,500 miles of fish habitat. In return, the Forests and Fish framework promised regulatory stability, with future rule changes guided by science and tied to resource objectives.”
Conservationists and the state itself have argued that the rule change follows the criteria for such a change laid out in the policy itself and in fact upholds the spirit of the flagship conservation law.
“Passing this rule fulfills a 25-year promise made when our state’s Forests and Fish law passed in 1999: To update the rules when the science shows a need,” Washington Conservation Action Forest Program Director Rachel Baker said in a news release. “This will mean healthier forests, healthier fish, healthier communities.”
