Saving Bessie

When a patch of forest near Lake Whatcom was slated for clearcutting, Bellingham community members and organizations rallied to save it. 

Story by Charlotte Meenach // Photos by Kieran Bresnahan 

6/8/2022

The Planet finds it crucial to acknowledge that these events take place on land stolen from the Coast Salish people. The Nooksack Tribe and Lummi Nation have been stewards of this land since time immemorial.

A young man lies on the forest floor. He’s vulnerable not only to the elements but also the overwhelming feelings of grief that wash over him. He wipes away his tears while peering up at the hollow space once filled with towering trees as he weeps. After a moment, Wil Henkel picks himself up and begins his hike away from the clearcut area and back to the road. The imprint of his body is outlined in the soil and leaves a small trace of life where there was once a thriving forest.

“I definitely feel altered by these places no matter what stage of the forestry they're in; it's pretty meaningful,” said Henkel, a third-year at Western Washington University. “I figure it's better to have at least some relationship to it, even if it's fleeting, or disappearing than it is to not even think about it.”

Bessie is the name of a forest that sits just south of Lake Whatcom and is home to trees over 100 years old that are essential to storing excess carbon. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages over 1.2 million hectares of land, roughly 33 times the size of Seattle. Bessie falls under this jurisdiction.

DNR defines old-growth as being biodiverse and predating 1850, said Kenny Ocker,  DNR communications manager. Bessie is a second-growth, also known as a legacy forest, an area where trees have grown after clear-cutting, erasing most signs of previous disturbance. Now, it’s on its way to old-growthdom.

In November 2021, DNR published a memo stating its intent to sell Bessie for timber.  Some in the community countered quickly. 

"They [the community] play such an important role in making sure that the policy we're developing and advocating for in the legislative sense reflects the community values and the [community] vision," said Kaylee Galloway, a Whatcom County council member and one of the people that lobbied against logging there.

This patch of forest is one of the first pieces of land to be set aside for the new carbon offset program introduced by DNR on April 6, 2022.  Older forests like Bessie are becoming more valuable as the world addresses the climate crisis.

Carbon sequestration is the process by which trees capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. Doing so can help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Ocker explained that carbon polluters can pay for carbon credits. These credits allow companies and people to offset their emissions by “adopting” forests like Bessie which can sequester the carbon they produce. This helps compensate for a company’s, or in this case, Whatcom County’s, carbon pollution. From a colonial perspective, forests have primarily been valued for their economic benefit as timber. However, there are ways to sustain the biodiversity of old-growth forests without cutting them down, said Jerry Franklin, a former professor at the University of Washington and an expert in ecological forestry. Old-growth forests support diverse environments and healthy watersheds. They’re also notably talented at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gasses.

When it comes to managing second-growth forests, Franklin said it’s all about giving them time to grow.

“If you manage the forests on longer rotations, you're going to store more carbon,” Franklin said. “You're going to provide better value in terms of watershed protection and you're going to provide much more in the way of diverse wildlife habitat.”

Nonprofits including the Whatcom Million Trees Project, Center for Responsible Forestry, Sierra Club and RE Sources along with community members and government officials, like Galloway, all questioned DNR’s decision to sell Bessie.

“There's a lot of concerns regarding development, which has prompted the city and the county to proactively acquire land and conserve it,” said Alex Harris, land and water policy manager for RE Sources.  

Whatcom Million Trees lobbied behind the scenes and helped with the adaptation of the counter-letter. Micheal Feerer, the executive director of Whatcom Million Trees, described the organization as one of the few groups in the area that tackle both tree protection and tree planting. 

“There's a declining amount of legacy forest left in this county. And so we feel that what’s left has to be protected,” Feerer said.

RE Sources is a local organization that serves to restore the Salish Sea and encourage climate activism. They analyzed how logging would affect the water quality of Lake Whatcom watershed and found the approach would be unsustainable. 

The Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental organizations in the country, helped create petitions to lobby against the sale. 

“We each had different strengths,” Feerer said.

Not every parcel of land managed by DNR has been allocated to offset carbon emissions.

Henkel and fellow Western student Carly Lloyd visited Longmont, another DNR-managed land parcel, after it had been sold for logging. Longmont overlooks Boulder Creek which connects to the North Fork of the Nooksack River. 

Upon arriving, they shuffled through an obstacle course of fallen branches and deserted stumps as well as buckets and branches loggers had left behind. Counting the rings on the felled trees uncovered that some had lived for more than 100 years. After a century of growth, they were being packed and sent to their final destination: a mill. 

“It was really interesting to see it in the middle of the process and just how intense the destruction is,” Lloyd said.

Preserving forests for carbon credits instead of logging them goes beyond tree protection. To most advocates in Whatcom County, this method is preferred over clear-cutting. These same advocates warn that the fight is not over. 

Carbon credits are a temporary solution for a much larger problem. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues the world faces today and small fixes will only result in small wins, Henkel said. 

“That is a legacy forest. So go out and walk and experience it and come to your own conclusions,” Henkel said.

Charlotte Meenach is a first-generation College of the Environment student. A modern-day tree hugger, she loves writing about forest preservation and ecological forestry.