Lands commissioner plans to keep working with feds
EVERETT — Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove said recent executive orders by President Donald Trump aimed at boosting logging in federal lands won’t drastically change his agency’s positive relationship with federal land agencies.
Since 2017, under Washington’s Good Neighbor Authority agreement, the state’s Department of Natural Resources has worked on projects with federal agencies in every Washington national forest except Umatilla.
The Good Neighbor Authority agreement allows the state to hire local companies to work on watershed, range land and forest restoration projects with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
“We probably have one of the most successful Good Neighbor Authority operations in the country,” Upthegrove said in an interview with the Daily Herald on Tuesday. “We can continue to be a good example of how states can work with the federal government on shared forestry goals, and it seems like [the executive orders] could mean opportunities to expand that work together to meet some of our shared goals around fuels reduction and science-based restoration work.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/lands-commissioner-plans-to-keep-working-with-feds/