In response to the Forest Practices Board issuing the rule to expand buffers on non-fish perennial streams on Nov. 26, the Washington Farm Forestry Association (WFFA) and Washington Forest Protection Association (WFPA) filed litigation.

The petition for declaratory and injunctive relief was in Thurston County Superior Court. Judge Christine Schaller will hear the case, which is scheduled for March 27, 2026. The agencies listed as respondents are the Washington Forest Practices Board, Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology), and Washington Department of Natural Resources.

“What the lawsuit says is to go back and follow the process of analyzing alternatives, allowing the public to weigh in on those alternatives so they can be part of making the trade-offs,” said Cindy Mitchell, the CFO and senior director of public affairs of WFPA. “Because anytime you have an economic activity, there’s a trade-off for jobs and economic activity and impacts on the resource. And are we meeting the environmental protection laws? In this particular case, where the science was leading is that they could do spot buffers or they could identify areas where water would heat more often than not, and they could apply buffers there.”

An alternative Mitchell is referring to is the minority Timber, Fish, and Wildlife (TFW) Policy non-fish perennial recommendation that didn’t go through the process of being analyzed through the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) or a small business economic impact analysis, as the majority TFW Policy non-fish perennial recommendation, which called for the expanded buffers, did.

“Basically, when Ecology came in and said, ‘Nope, this minority report won’t work,’ it took it off the table and nobody got a chance to even hear what was in there so that’s part of the process that wasn’t followed,” Mitchell said. “The Forest Practice Board has never had a rulemaking where they didn’t have alternatives.”

The four agency actions called out in the petition are the Board adopting the expanded buffer rule; the Board’s determination of non-significance for the expanded buffer rule in its SEPA filing; Ecology’s interpretation of the Washington Administrative Code “Tier II — Protection of waters of higher quality than the standards” as prohibiting “measurable change” in temperature under the current buffer rule; and the Ecology’s memo titled “Water Quality Program Concurrence with the Forest Practices Board’s Proposed Western Washington Type Np (non-fish perennial) Waters Buffer Rule” that accompanied its “Final Tier II Antidegradation Analysis For The Washington Forest Practices Board’s Proposed Western Washington Type Np (non-fish perennial) Waters Buffer Rule” report.

During the Board’s Nov. 12 meeting, discussion focused on how the expanded buffer rule would affect how timber sales are laid out and harvest operations and that the ruling implementation would be delayed until Aug. 31, 2026, to allow time for the Forest Board Practices Manual to be revised.

To determine how the expanded buffers could affect operations, Mitchell reviewed forest practices applications that had been submitted to the Washington Dept. of Natural Resources from January through October 2026 that had non-fish perennial streams; the forest practices applications are required to be submitted for all activity that pertains to forest land and involves timber.

“You got to have a master’s degree to figure out how to lay a [harvest] unit out; there’s so many different regulations that have to be considered on the landscape,” Mitchell said.

What the maps also showed was the snake-like spread of non-fish perennial streams across the landscape and depending upon the landscape, accessing the trees beyond the 75-foot buffer may prove difficult or impossible. Additionally, the road infrastructure supporting harvest operations are laid out under the current Forest Practices Rules.

“That was a big part of Forest and Fish, to eliminate roads and to make sure roads aren’t providing silt or washing out …” Mitchell said. “All of that was done over 20 years ago and those roads are attached to harvest units based on the current or the then-flexible stream rules for headwater streams or NP streams so that gets upended.”

In Petition’s VIII Prayer for Relief, among the items that WFFA and WFPA call for is “an order vacating the Expanded Buffer Rule and remanding it to the Board.” Mitchell emphasized that the goal is to keep the warming of streams to a minimum and following the science is how best to accomplish this.

“I don’t know any industry that has $8 or $9 million per biennium going into dedicated research to find out how forest practices are protecting the public resources and also making sure that there can be a forest industry,” Mitchell said.

With the legislation session starting in January, it is anticipated that the expanded buffer rule will be discussed and possibly be the focus of legislative discussions.