County may postpone logging project to 2026

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 29, 2025

King County’s 45-acre logging operation in Island Center Forest could take place later this fall but might be postponed another year if permitting requirements can’t be met in time for a 2025 harvest, according to the county’s lead forester.

The ecological thinning project — the largest since the county took ownership of Island Center Forest 20 years ago — was scheduled to take place last summer. All told, the equivalent of 110 loaded log trucks of Douglas fir, red alder and other tree species are to be removed, a project meant to address a number of ecological problems in a forest once owned by the state Department of Natural Resources.

Last fall, Paul Fischer, the county’s senior forester, postponed the harvest to this summer after he received a number of substantive comments about the scope of the project and its potential impact on nesting birds.

He has since made some minor adjustments to the project, which means the county now has to issue a project addendum followed by a notice of action — with a three-week window to allow individuals to appeal the county’s project. He also has to address permitting issues involving the access road — 115th Avenue S.W. off of Bank Road S.W. — which is taking more time than he had estimated.

If he can complete the notification and permitting process by early September, the county will put the logging project out to bid to regional timber-harvesting companies for harvest in late September and October, he said. “If we don’t have a final decision by the first week of September, then it’ll definitely be 2026,” he said.

Fischer said some of the comments focused on the scale of the project; some asked that it be smaller or conducted in two phases — half one year, the other half the next year. But Fischer said he decided not to change the size or break it into two phases.

The county determined the size based on the forest’s ecological conditions — root rot and other problems that thinning could help to address. “We didn’t add in areas to inflate the size,” he said. As for phasing the project over two years, that would create operational challenges, he said.

But county officials did find concerns voiced by bird advocates about the nesting season compelling, he said. As a result, Fischer has implemented an interim rule that would disallow forest operations between April 15 and July 31 — a no-harvest window that some other municipalities follow and that the Vashon Bird Alliance called for.

“I actually think it’s a really good approach. As an organization that has ecological considerations as one of our primary management considerations, we should be holding ourselves to a high standard,” he said.

He plans to meet with wildlife biologists and advocates later this year to determine if this should become a permanent county-wide rule for forestry operations.

Meanwhile, islanders who want to stay up to date on the project’s status should visit King County’s website — kingcounty.gov — and search for “Island Center Forest.”

“The website will be the main source of information,” he said.

Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.