Deep in the shadow of Mount Rainier, Gifford “Marco” Pinchot IV stands in a dense true fir grove of trees. Pinchot, executive director of the Nisqually Community Forest and great-grandson of the first U.S. Forest Service chief, represents a new stewardship era. Rather than managing these lands for rapid timber volume, Pinchot and tribal, scientific, and conservation partners are pioneering a science-first approach focused on ecological restoration, watershed health, and selective thinning.
The Nisqually Land Trust invites the public to join on the Nisqually Community Forest Tours each summer. This one took place in Ashford on Sept. 2.
To showcase how ecological forestry can heal this landscape, Pinchot and Northwest Natural Resources Group (NNRG) forester Chase recently led a field tour along South Busy Wild Creek near Ashford. Representatives from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Nisqually River Foundation, and regional conservationists attended the tour. The field site also serves as the blueprint for an upcoming National Society of American Foresters (SAF) conference demonstration in Tacoma.
Spanning 5,500 acres along Busy Wild Creek, this property was managed for over 70 years as an industrial timber plantation. The legacy of those operations is visible in "dog hair thick" stands of overcrowded, stunted trees whose tight canopies left the forest floor dark and barren of native understory plants.
“We are trying to move the stand toward structural complexity and mimic some of the characteristic functions of an older forest. This means we will have larger trees than mills in the area can take,” said Pinchot.
This process begins with pre-commercial thinning to alleviate overcrowding, followed by commercial thinning where foresters harvest smaller trees while leaving the strongest to grow with less competition. This method has successfully transformed dense, closed stands into open, multi-layered ecosystems. Where light now reaches the forest floor, native species like red and black huckleberry, bear grass, Oregon grape, lupine and young cedar are returning, creating vital wildlife habitats and biodiversity within tree stands.
Ashford is situated at an elevation of 1,800 feet. The community forest buffers Busy Wild Creek, a critical headwater tributary of the Mashel and Nisqually rivers, which rises to 3,500 feet. The creek provides spawning ground for threatened steelhead trout and Chinook salmon, both listed under the Endangered Species Act. Decades of heavy logging left the watershed vulnerable to winter flooding and extreme summer droughts. To combat this, researchers are managing the canopy to act as a "hydrological sponge."
Supported by an Allen Family Philanthropy grant awarded to the Nisqually Indian Tribe, foresters from the Northwest Natural Resource Group, including forester Chase Beyer, are conducting climate-adaptation studies.
Their research shows that dense, unmanaged tree canopies stay warm from their own metabolic respiration, literally waking up and respiring, which intercepts and prematurely melts snow. By thinning canopies, more snow reaches the forest floor and stays frozen longer, slowly releasing cold water into the creek during dry summer months.
"This study is built around answering: how does this help with snowpack and soil moisture?" said Beyer.
To refine this technique, researchers feed field data like snow depth measurements and tree water consumption rates from a Portland State University sap flux study into the EPA’s VELMA (Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments) hydrology model. As an original calibration site, returning new, precise field data to the EPA will improve the model’s accuracy.
This project relies on a close, sovereign partnership. The Nisqually Indian Tribe owns 2,600 acres of the community forest, managed by the Nisqually Community Forest staff.
To fund this 100-year vision, the forest leverages innovative environmental markets. Microsoft purchased carbon credits sequestered across 520 acres of Land Trust property via California's cap-and-trade exchange.
Meanwhile, a feasibility study funded by a tribal Department of Commerce grant is testing whether wet slash piles, specifically low-density white true firs, can be processed into high-grade biochar.
"Can we chip that and sell it as biochar?" Pinchot asks. "If we can figure this out, we want to share that information freely because it would be great for climate and air quality if bigger timber companies did this too".
While these innovations promise long-term sustainability, ecological thinning introduces supply chain challenges. Industrial mills prefer uniform log sizes (12 to 18 inches). In contrast, thinning for structural complexity produces diverse log diameters, including trees up to 36 inches.
"Because we are thinning across age classes, we will need different mills that can mill larger wood in the future," said Pinchot.
The community forest maintains vital relationships with its industrial neighbors, selling True Fir (Grand, Silver and Noble) to Morton’s Hampton Lumber Mill and high-quality peeler logs to Graham’s Rainier Veneer Mill for plywood, ensuring ecological restoration remains economically self-sustaining.
By proving that timber harvest and salmon recovery can coexist, the Nisqually Community Forest shows that an ecological forest thinning model can exist and inform future planning for new building techniques.
