SOUTH BEND — At a hearing last month, Pacific County Superior Court Judge Donald Richter rejected an environmental group’s lawsuit against the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, bringing the 138-acre “Freedom” timber sale northeast of Naselle a step closer to being logged.

The Legacy Forest Defense Coalition has since appealed the ruling with the Division II Court of Appeals.

The LFDC argued that the Freedom stands were sufficiently mature to warrant protection under the DNR’s own policies, and that by ignoring those policies, the state violated both the Public Lands Act and the State Environmental Policy Act. It was a layered argument that, in court, failed to make it past its first critical assertion: that the trees were mature enough to be considered “structurally complex.”

The court acknowledged in its official opinion that there was evidence to support both sides’ assessments of the Freedom sale’s structural complexity, but that legal precedent demanded that the agency’s expertise be “accorded substantial weight.” The court further acknowledged that because it was deferring to the state on the question of the trees’ maturity, it “[declined] to reach issues” pertaining to the DNR’s compliance with its own policies.

Timber industry advocates are counting the court’s decision as a win. In a recent press release, American Forest Resource Council president Travis Joseph characterized the case as “an important precedent [that] confirms that the agency is correctly balancing old-growth protections with sustainable timber harvesting on these working forests.”

But to LFDC founder Stephen Kropp, the argument isn’t just unfinished. It hasn’t really started. “[Judge Richter] didn’t rule on the merits of the case,” he says. “He did not issue an opinion on our core argument, which is that the DNR violated its own policies and procedures.”

The LFDC has attempted to halt a number of other DNR timber sales on nearly identical legal grounds, but the Freedom sale case was the first to reach the merits stage. Earlier this year, the DNR withdrew the Last Crocker Sorts timber sale in Jefferson County and the Carrot timber sale in Thurston County before lawsuits over each sale could proceed that far. And last year, the Division II Court of Appeals deemed another environmental group’s case moot, as the timber in question had already been logged.

The farther these cases progress, the deeper the courts may have to probe into fundamental differences of philosophy regarding the future of older, publicly owned forests in western Washington.

“I understand [environmental groups] have their beliefs and they want to halt a whole lot of timber harvesting,” said Pacific County Commissioner Lisa Olsen.

Whether the argument over the Freedom timber sale will proceed to the point where both sides can express and advocate for those underlying beliefs remains to be seen.