To read the Olympic Experimental State Forest News click here.
Washington’s legislature created the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) in 1991 with a purpose of demonstrating innovative management methods that successfully integrate environmental and economic interests into pragmatic management of forest and ocean resources. The legislature found growing demands that forest resources be fully utilized for their commodity values are met simultaneously by increased demands for protection and preservation of those same resources. And while competing demands are most often viewed as mutually exclusive, ONRC is committed to the proposition that commodity production and ecological values can be integrated. Through ONRC, the legislature fosters and supports the research and education necessary to provide sound scientific information on which to base sustainable forest industries while sustaining the ecological values demanded by much of the public.
ONRC’s Forest Program includes:
(1) Research and education on forest resources management issues on the landscape, ecosystem, or regional level, including issues that cross legal and administrative boundaries;
(2) Research and education that broadly integrate marine and terrestrial issues, including interactions of marine, aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems, and that identify options and opportunities to integrate the production of commodities with the preservation of ecological values.
(3) Research and education on natural resources and their social and economic implications, and on alternative economic and social bases for sustainable, healthy, resource-based communities.
In order to implement these programs and achieve the state goals, the Center may solicit gifts, grants, conveyances, bequests, and devises, whether real or personal property or both, in trust or otherwise, to be directed to the Center for carrying out the purposes of the Center. The Center may solicit contracts for work, financial, and in-kind contributions, and support from private industries, interest groups, federal and state sources, and other sources. It may also use separately appropriated funds of the University of Washington for the Center’s activities.