RAC funding awarded
The Olympic Peninsula Resource Advisory Council (RAC) has awarded $50,000 in partnership with American Whitewater to the OFC for the OFC’s forest thinning monitoring program. Projects are proposed to the RAC across five counties and the OFC project was awarded funding by the Clallam and Grays Harbor RAC sub-groups. This funding allows the OFC to expand the monitoring program to complete pre- and post-harvest monitoring for all active sites to evaluate the prescriptions’ effectiveness in 1) creating desired harvest outcomes, and 2) accelerating the development of late successional conditions in the forest stands. The Collaborative will continue to work with our field consultants Resilient Forestry and the Olympic National Forest to grow this program and communicate project results to stakeholders and the public.
Project Update – Tiger Tail
Tiger Tail is an approximately 170-acre project area in the Wynoochee watershed, located north of Lake Wynoochee. The Collaborative has been working with the Olympic National Forest on this since 2023, when the boundary flagging was completed by consulting forestry company Resilient Forestry. Since then, Resilient Forestry completed stand exam data collection and has been working on the prescription.
To date, the Collaborative has helped facilitate the harvest of more than 12.1 MMBF, and assisted on more than 1400 acres.
Once this project is complete, there will be another successful restoration thinning project in Olympic National Forest and funds will be able to be used for stewardship projects yet to be identified. This would not be possible without the collaboration of our partners, including the Department of Natural Resources, who has provided funding for this project and others, as well as the Olympic National Forest staff, one of which you can read more about below!
Partner Spotlight: Josh Rose, Olympic National Forest
Josh Rose is Olympic National Forest liaison for the Collaborative. He brings a wealth of experience and expertise to his work with the Collaborative.
He graduated from Colorado State with a Bachelors in watershed science and resource management. He did his graduate work in ecology in Yellowstone National Park, and was fortunate enough to work on additional hydrologic and wetland projects across the Rockies and in Death Valley.
After leaving Colorado, he spent 13 years in Alaska working for the USFWS on projects such as climate and hydrology research, resource mapping, and wildlife diet and population studies. Toward the end of his time in Alaska, he served as the oil and gas coordinator for the Arctic NWR where he focused on addressing resource information gaps, policy development, and land use planning.
Most recently he served as the Deputy Project Leader at Sheldon-Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in the high desert of south-central Oregon where he managed the refuge, biology/habitat, and visitor services programs.
Currently he is the Natural Resources Staff officer where he oversees the staff focused on timber harvest and management, wildlife management, habitat improvement, and ecological restoration. He splits his time between the Olympia and Quilcene offices and looks forward to working with all of the extraordinary partners across the Olympic Peninsula.
If you’re interested in contacting him directly, he can be reached at Joshua.Rose2@usda.gov.
New Board members
Welcome Collin Emmerson and Ron Hurn!
Collin Emmerson is currently the Timber Procurement Manager for Sierra Pacific Industries Aberdeen and Centralia Sawmill Divisions. As such, he manages the flow of logs from sales purchased through his divisions as well as coordinates with other Washington and Oregon divisions as well as SPI’s tree farm on log flow. Within SPI, he has held other roles including Safety and Environmental Coordinator and Environmental Engineer. In college, he worked for SPI doing jobs including cruising timber for inventory, labor SPI’s fabrication division, and assisting with windows service for Sierra Pacific Windows.
Prior to working for SPI, he worked for Washoe County Air Quality Management District as the Permitting Engineer for a year and for NewFields Mining and Technical Service as a staff Engineer for six years.
Collin has a Master of Science Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Bachelor of Science Environmental Engineering, both from the University of Nevada Reno.
Ron Hurn is the Timber Manager at Interfor US Timber in Port Angeles, WA. They are currently operating one US Forest Service timber sale, and 2 timber sales with the Department of Natural Resource’s Good Neighbor Authority program.
Ron has worked in the timber industry on the Olympic Peninsula for 35 years, and has purchased numerous US Forest Service sales over his career. He has also sat on numerous boards that that work with the US Forest Service timbers sales program. This experience is invaluable to the Collaborative.