Elwha Legacy Forests

On March 5, 2023, Earth Law Center co-sponsored a rally to raise awareness about the State’s decision to defy the City’s request to pause the “Aldwell” timber sale in the Elwha River Watershed. Over a hundred community members, largely from Port Angeles, lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Jamestown S’klallam Tribe, Lummi Nation, and surrounding areas in the Olympic Peninsula, joined together in a peaceful rally.

Unfortunately, even this was not enough, and the forest that was part of the “Aldwell” timber sale was fully logged (166 acres).

This tragedy became the catalyst to form the Elwha Legacy Forest coalition and to use all available tools to halt industrial logging of legacy forests in the Elwha Watershed. 

Stephen Kropp, founder of the Center for Responsible Forestry and now head of the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition, started the movement to protect legacy forests in Washington. 

In just a few years, the coalition of organizations working to protect legacy forests has grown considerably. Through community hikes, educational events, press coverage, political pressure, and lawsuits more legacy forests are being saved. 

These individual victories create an environment ripe for systemic change.

ELC works with a broad coalition of organizations, Indigenous elders, and the City of Port Angels and is an active member of the Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance. ELC volunteer attorney Joel Summer is counsel for the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition in a timber sale appeal filed in Spring 2024, seeking to protect over 100 acres of legacy forest and old-growth trees in Pacific County, WA.

Ecocentric refers to a nature-centered approach; one that fosters a harmonious relationship with Nature and with ourselves, as a part of Nature.  We are deconstructing the colonial mindset: One rooted in resource extraction and embedded in mainstream societal values and the very building blocks of the US legal system. Indeed, the Washington State constitution contemplates forest management for revenue, including for schools. While, the WA Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Conservation Northwest et al. v. WA Department of Natural Resources et al., recognized the opportunity for revenue generation from forest lands by means other than extractive logging, we are still left with a system that commodifies Nature. One that has tied school funding to the destruction of these life-giving ecosystems.  

ELC’s amicus brief in the Conservation Northwest case advanced a novel argument – that people have a fundamental right to live in a balanced relationship with the Earth (as secured by Art. 1, section 30 as a right retained by the people), and included an Acknowledgment Regarding Indigenous Sovereignty and the Inherent Rights of Nature, reading in part:

“More fundamental than our colonial legal framework are the inherent rights of the Indigenous Peoples who have walked, since time immemorial, on these lands, and the rights of Nature itself, with the corresponding human responsibilities to ensure that all life has the chance to flourish. The sacred relationship between humans and Mother Earth is out of balance. The type of land exploitation and profit-maximization endorsed by DNR has led us to a place where we struggle to protect the last mature and old growth forests on what are now called state lands. Amici respectfully ask the Court to keep these fundamental truths in mind when considering the issues before it, remembering to place those issues in the larger context of historical injustices and the undeniable realities of the climate crisis.”  

ELC’s amicus brief in the Conservation Northwest case advanced a novel argument – that people have a fundamental right to live in a balanced relationship with the Earth (as secured by Art. 1, section 30 as a right retained by the people), and included an Acknowledgment Regarding Indigenous Sovereignty and the Inherent Rights of Nature, reading in part:

“More fundamental than our colonial legal framework are the inherent rights of the Indigenous Peoples who have walked, since time immemorial, on these lands, and the rights of Nature itself, with the corresponding human responsibilities to ensure that all life has the chance to flourish. The sacred relationship between humans and Mother Earth is out of balance. The type of land exploitation and profit-maximization endorsed by DNR has led us to a place where we struggle to protect the last mature and old growth forests on what are now called state lands. Amici respectfully ask the Court to keep these fundamental truths in mind when considering the issues before it, remembering to place those issues in the larger context of historical injustices and the undeniable realities of the climate crisis.”