KING5 and The Daily Herald covered the Tulalip Tribes plans to thin 88 acres of forestland this summer.
The Tulalip Tribes forestry department manages about 8,000 acres of woods on the 22,000-acre reservation. The work follows a blueprint that Tulalip leaders adopted in a 1978 Forest Management Plan.
“Many years ago, tribal leaders saw the value of retaining the interior core of the reservation in a forestry setting, helping to preserve cultural values and opportunities into the future,” said Glen Gobin, vice chairman of the Tulalip Tribes board of directors.
The tribes hope to reap financial rewards and estimate $3 million in annual revenue within 25 years. Local companies benefit, too. One is Melton’s, Precision Thinning, a two-man operation from Sedro-Woolley that did the recent thinning. Local paper and pulp mills also get more work.
Much of the area of the current Tulalip Reservation was logged about a century ago and later caught fire, Gobin said. After that, red alders and other hardwood trees replaced the old forest dominated by three main conifers: western hemlocks, Douglas firs and western red cedars.
A true old growth forest would take centuries to mature naturally. Scientists have been trying to figure out how to accelerate the process.
In nature, fire, lightning strikes, disease and windstorms might have created openings and variations in the density of trees. Forestry programs have been trying to achieve similar effects through thinning and varying the kinds of trees planted.
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Unlike most timber operations, the Tulalips’ work has a strong cultural component. That includes the seasonal gathering of plants for food, medicine, baskets and clothing.
