Washington State Department of Natural Resources

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages over 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km²) of forest, range, agricultural, and commercial lands in the U.S. state of Washington. The DNR also manages 2,600,000 acres (11,000 km²) of aquatic areas, which include shorelines, tidelands, lands under Puget Sound and the coast, and navigable lakes and rivers. Its regions of jurisdiction include eight Upland Regions and three Aquatic Districts. Part of the DNR's management responsibility includes monitoring of mining cleanup, environmental restoration, providing scientific information about earthquakes, landslides, and ecologically sensitive areas. DNR also works towards conservation, in the form of Aquatic Reserves such as Maury Island and in the form of Natural Area Preserves like Mima Mounds or Natural Resource Conservation Areas like Woodard Bay Natural Resource Conservation Area.

The Department was created in 1957 to manage around 2.5 million acres of state trust lands for the people of Washington. DNR management of state-owned forests, farms, rangeland, aquatic, and commercial lands generates more than $200 million in annual revenue for public schools, state government institutions, and county services. It does so by harvesting timber on trust lands and later selling it through public auctions. The currently largest trust managed is for K-12 schools, with around 1.7 million acres of land assigned to it. DNR is also Washington's largest firefighting force, with more than 1,500 firefighters who control wildland fires for more than 13 million acres of private and state-owned forest lands. Other sources of funds for the department's activities are forestry, federal grants designated for specific purposes – many of which are wildfire combating measures – and leasing or auctioning off aquatic land for geoduck harvesting.