The more than 40 million acres of state trust lands across the West include agricultural fields and natural recreation areas, mines and wind farms, tidal flats and forests. “Walking in a structurally complex forest, you just get that warm, fuzzy, green, mossy feeling,” said Daniel Donato, a forest ecologist with the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Structurally complex forests host at-risk species like spotted owls, marbled murrelets, salmon and salamanders. With more pressures on the state’s forests, including climate change and habitat fragmentation, he hopes to change how the state runs its forests and its funds. Still, without site-specific assessments and management plans in place, the potential for selling credits from state forests is uncertain, said Indroneil Ganguly, a professor of environmental and forest science at the University of Washington.