Our History

Who are the Friends of the ACFL? Tree Huggers, of course! Especially the trees of the Anacortes Community Forestlands. And just as the forest we love is made up of a great variety of plants and animals interacting and growing together, so is our group a collection of many individuals, with many special concerns and talents, brought together by our love for the ACFL.

The Friends was formally founded in 1987 by Ruth Johns, Doreen Dunton, Leigh Slotemaker, and Phil Burton. The Forest Advisory Board had asked for a group of hikers to organize field trips for children and seniors. At the same time, the city was in the middle of a series of clearcut logging operations in the ACFL, and it was obvious to the Friends that this process would soon destroy the woods altogether. So the emphasis for the group’s activities quickly became focused on lobbying for the ACFL’s preservation, and many more residents joined in the cause. 

Friends of the ACFL became a regular participant in Forest Advisory Board meetings, and not just as an adversary. While continuing to challenge the logging plan and arguing for its termination, the Friends realized that long term protection required a coordinated forest education program. We organized it in the following four parts:

1) Convince the Forest Advisory Board and City Council that cutting down the forest was the wrong way to manage it;

2) Show the community what was really going on in the woods;

3) Rally support from others who were concerned; and

4) Make the ACFL a part of the science education program of the school district, so that children could learn about the natural world firsthand and develop a respect for its magic and majesty.

Many people joined the cause, each contributing their own skills and expertise. Bill Rockwell flew over the ACFL and took photos of the clearcuts, and Bob Jahns displayed these in his bookstore. People were horrified to learn that this was going on. Up until then, the logging had been kept out of sight. Ross Barnes and Leo Dorsey documented some of the old growth trees the loggers had felled, and the Anacortes American published their pictures. A group of teachers from Island View Elementary School went on a field trip in the Cranberry Lake area and agreed to include such field trips in their curriculum. The Parks Department put a questionnaire in its quarterly newsletter, asking what people thought about the logging plan, and was surprised to learn how many residents opposed it. At the same time the Park Comprehensive Plan identified hiking trails as the most valued recreational facility in town.

The Forest Advisory Board stopped revenue logging in 1989. The City Council agreed to include the management of the ACFL in the Parks Department budget that year, and it has remained as a fully funded division of the Parks Department ever since. The Anacortes School District has included field trips in the ACFL for its elementary classes every year (with some hiccups during the pandemic, of course, but we’re back in full!), a program we offer as the centerpiece of the Friends of the Forest ongoing commitment to education and community service. In 1998 the City Council adopted the Conservation Easement Program, by which the community can preserve the ACFL forever.

Now, over 40 years later, Friends of the ACFL boasts hundreds of members, old and new, who continue to love, care for, and protect our treasured forestlands so that they can be enjoyed for generations to come. Our education and outreach programs continue to grow, and we love inspiring a deep appreciation for this beautiful slice of Fidalgo Island for anyone who ventures here.

These are all things the Friends of the ACFL has done and continue to do, with your support and participation. We are a bunch of tree huggers just like you, and we are committed to the perpetual preservation of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands.

Easement Program

Great news: we have conserved almost all of the possible acreage of forestland on this part of Fidalgo Island! For every $1,000 donated to the CEP, the City placed a perpetual Conservation Easement on one Forest Land acre. The City continues to own and manage the property but that acre can never be logged, mined, or used for any commercial purpose, nor be sold, leased, or transferred out of public ownership. The easement is held by Skagit Land Trust, which will monitor the protected property annually to ensure that the easement terms are being observed. Most donations, of course, are less than $1,000. Donations, in whatever amount, are accumulated with others by the City’s Parks Department. Whenever the total reaches $1,000 another acre can be permanently protected with a Conservation Easement. Since 1998, the Conservation Easement Program has received donations which will permanently protect nearly 1,800 acres in the ACFL. For more information, click here: City of Anacortes Forest Lands.

For the most recent announcement about protecting ACFL, please see this article: Easement Expansion: Skagit Land Trust’s Conservation Easement in the ACFL Grows By 253 Acres.

Image courtesy of the Anacortes Museum.