I-90 forest corridor closing to target shooters for one year

Starting today, a popular swath of national forest land along the Interstate 90 corridor between North Bend and Snoqualmie Pass will be closed to target shooters for one year, and possibly permanently.

Closing forest lands where shooting is allowed is a controversial move, but Snoqualmie District Ranger Jim Franzel said he made the decision after gunfire has repeatedly come uncomfortably close to hikers, campers, contract workers and rangers.

On Wednesday, rangers in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest began posting signs in the 7,000-acre area off Interstate 90 warning target shooters to push their activities into more remote sections of the more than 1 million-acre forest.

Areas included in the shooting ban are along Tinkham and Denny Creek roads, although the areas still will be open to licensed hunters during the permissible months.

Franzel said anyone caught target shooting in the banned areas can be fined up to $5,000 and face up to six months in jail. While he says the closure is a temporary one-year ban that will be reviewed in the fall, he would like to see target shooting permanently banned in the areas off I-90.

"It's just a dangerous situation," Franzel said. "We have a lot of target shooters going into areas that are screened with vegetation. Target shooters believe they are shooting in a safe manner and they're not."

It now is legal to discharge firearms in national forests, as long as it isn't within 150 yards of a residence, building, campsite, developed recreation site or occupied area.

Franzel said his decision to push forward with the ban came after a contract worker, who was recently in the forest repairing areas damaged by floods late last year, was nearly hit by gunfire. Franzel said that because of the dense forest coverage it is often difficult to determine where the gunfire is coming from.

Dave Workman, a North Bend resident who is senior editor of Gun Week magazine, said he has talked to a contractor who was almost struck by target shooters in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

"Some of these guys have been shooting along the road. ... That's not responsible shooting, it's just plain stupidity," Workman said. "I think about the image that these slob shooters are creating for every responsible gun owner who may want to go out and do recreational shooting."

But one Pierce County hunter and firearms instructor believes that responsible gun users are being unfairly punished.

"I do not believe the number of incidents that happen justifies penalizing everybody for the carelessness of very few," said Bob Wendt, who belongs to the National Rifle Association and the Washington State Rifle And Pistol Association. "Personally, I think people who shoot carelessly should be held to task for it legally. The days of shooting bottles at a landfill are long over."

Wendt said he is concerned the ban on target shooting, what he calls "plinking," will encroach on the right to hunt in national forests.

"If you close national forests to plinking, you close national forests to hunting. If it's not safe to plink, it's not safe to hunt," Wendt said.

Nearly 5 million people visit the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest annually, the majority of whom, Franzel said, travel to easy-to-access trails and other destinations off I-90. The areas closed to target shooting will stretch from Exit 38, off I-90, to the top of Snoqualmie Pass.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com