When Matt Comisky walked into the Pinchot Partners’ Board meeting in 2013, he was surprised to hear he’d been dubbed the Timber Beast, by one of the founding members, mainly because of his role as Washington Manager for timber-industry advocate American Forest Resource Council (AFRC).
“Honestly, I thought I was the moderate in the room,” he said. “I believe there are places where trees should be cut and places that shouldn’t. No one is talking about going back to the 70s."
It was his love of the outdoors that led him to earn a B.S. in Forest Engineering from the University of Washington. He has spent time in just about every aspect of forestry: for Weyerhaeuser, providing engineering, forestry and project management to both large and small private landowners; with Washington State DNR as an engineer focused on road and stream crossing design projects; and his current multi-faceted work with AFRC.
Because of his wide-ranging knowledge of the industry, he is a featured guest for the monthly segment, Timber Talk, on Local Matters, a radio show on the Timber Country Radio station out of Aberdeen.
One of the challenges of his position he said is trying to understand the public's desire to build with wood, and enjoy all the by-products of timber: paper, telephone poles, those brown boxes that show up on our doorstep — but thinking we don't need to cut trees to accomplish that.
Not to mention the challenge of trying to apply science in a very political environment.
Click the link below to hear Matt talk about working with Pinchot Partners, being the "Timber Beast" and his vision for sustainable forestry.
Listen to his thoughts on forestry, here.