Seattle Times: WA must keep commitment to fire prevention on forestland
Opinion piece by Darcy Batura (The Nature Conservancy) and Jay McLaughlin (MARS)
We live in communities surrounded by forests — they define our landscapes, our livelihoods and our safety. We have witnessed both the devastation of extreme wildfires, and the incredible progress made in wildfire prevention and forest health. This legislative session, we urge our elected representatives to uphold their promise and allocate $125 million in the biennial budget to sustain this vital work.
In 2021, Washington passed House Bill 1168, committing $500 million over eight years in wildfire response, forest health and community resilience. This historic investment has already transformed landscapes and lives, enabling forest thinning, controlled burning, workforce training and better protection of homes — steps that reduce catastrophic wildfire risk while revitalizing forest ecosystems.
We are seeing this investment in action with big changes on Cle Elum Ridge that surrounds the communities of Cle Elum, Roslyn and Ronald. The 2017 Jolly Mountain Fire, ignited by lightning, smoldered for weeks in remote terrain before erupting into a massive blaze that forced hundreds to evacuate and turned our sky blood-red. It was a terrifying reminder that our overgrown forests were primed for disaster.
In response, the community rallied. We established the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition, which works across property ownerships to accelerate the pace and scale of restoration and wildfire mitigation. The Nature Conservancy has thinned nearly 2,000 acres of forest, reintroduced prescribed fire and created defensible spaces that make our towns safer. We have trained a new generation of workers in prescribed burning — an essential tool for restoring fire’s natural role in ecosystems. This work would not have been possible without support from HB1168, and these investments mean that when the next fire comes, we will have a fighting chance.
A similar story unfolds in Klickitat County, where increasingly severe wildfires have burned on the slopes of Mount Adams, creeping closer to the communities of Trout Lake and Glenwood. The fires sparked conversations about forest health and how we as communities can head off disaster.
With HB 1168 funding, we have built a collaborative, community-based approach to fire resilience. We have built a local workforce, equipped with the skills and tools — from chain saws to drip torches — to tackle the unnaturally dense forest undergrowth that could channel the next big fire into our neighborhoods. With chippers, saws and prescribed fire, we’ve treated thousands of acres of forests. This is not just fire prevention — it’s economic revitalization. By creating forestry jobs and expanding local businesses that support restoration, we are bringing new energy to rural economies long affected by the timber industry’s decline.
