Old Patmore Road, now littered with pine cones and needles, cuts a dark path through a quiet forest of old growth trees on Central Whidbey.

On a hot summer day, the old road is an inviting trail through cool woods. It travels past the imposing trunks of 350-year-old giants, wild rhododendrons and a covering of salal on the ground. At dusk, though, it can be a delightfully eerie place, as the darkness of the forest closes in and the sound of crows echo from the canopy.

Thanks to the efforts of a diverse crowd of residents, Island County’s 160-acre Rhododendron Park, which one state ecologist describes as a rare “museum piece,” is safe from chainsaws and bulldozers.

In front of a group of 25 people at the Board of Island County Commissioners meeting Monday, Island County Parks Superintendent Terri Arnold apologized for her plans to clearcut 20 acres of the park to build soccer fields and cut down 1.2 million board feet worth of trees to thin the old growth forest.

“This is really because of me this is happening,” Arnold said at the beginning of the public comment session.

Arnold announced that she was pulling the timber harvest permit and forming a group ecologists, rhododendron experts, fire risk assessors and others to help her come up with a comprehensive plan to maintain the health of the small forest.

The people who were there to protest the cutting of trees were delighted with the news.

“I’m happy to hear of the withdrawal of the permit,” said Kristi O’Donnell, executive director of Meerkerk Rhododendron Gardens.

“We’re very lucky that Terri Arnold is an exceedingly reasonable person,” Marianna Edain of the conservation group Whidbey Environmental Action Network said afterward.

The whole idea of chopping trees came about when Arnold visited Rhododendron Park and noticed a lot of fallen trees and dry understory, made up mainly of rhododendrons, salal and huckleberry. She was worried about safety and a possible fire hazard. Also, some campers complained that the woods were too dark.

Concerned, she asked a timber harvesting company, Washington Timberland Management, to take a look at the park. The company concluded that the trees were overcrowded and needed to be thinned.

At the same time, Arnold said she had been dealing with “compatibility issues” with the ballpark on the edge of the park, off Patmore Road. She said both Little League baseball and Central Whidbey Youth Soccer use the field, which doesn’t work very well. She proposed using the money from the timber harvest to cut down 20 acres adjacent to the ball field and build two soccer fields.

Arnold asked Washington Timberland to submit an application for the permit, which they did July 6. It states that the thinning would yield 1.14 million board feet and the 20-acre clear cut would yield an additional 400,000 board feet.

But now, Arnold admits that it was all a mistake.

“I made an error, but I’m very teachable,” she said. “A lot of good has come out of this controversy.”

Arnold said she wants to put together a roundtable of experts to look at the woods and advice her on a long-term management plan. She hopes to get the group together in September.

The plan may be to do nothing.

“I really don’t think it’s appropriate to thin old growth areas,” said Chris Chappell, an ecologist with the state’s Natural Heritage Program. His job is to inventory remnant forest stands in the state.

Chappell surveyed the park in the 1990s. What he found was a stand of trees representing an “imperiled” category of old growth forest within the Puget lowlands. The trees in at least half the park have never been cut, he said, which puts it in the “2 percent of the Puget lowlands that have never been logged.”

Chappell took core samples from two trees and gauged their ages at 350 years and 250 years. He estimates that the Douglas fir in the woods range from 150 to 400 years old.

Chappell said he’s not surprised that a timber company advised the county to thin the trees. On the other hand, he doubts that any ecologist would ever say that. He also doubts that Rhododendron Park is unhealthy, from an ecological standpoint.

“By definition, old growth includes dead, dying and diseased trees and plants,” he said. “It’s the nature of old growth. That doesn’t mean the forest is unhealthy.”

In fact, Chappell said thinning is likely to cause of much harm as good. By opening up the canopy, loggers may introduce exotic or invasive weeds.

Whatever the outcome may be, Arnold urges island residents to visit the park. The county is currently working with the Island County Trail Council to put in a new trail on the perimeter of the park.

No trees, she stresses, will be injured in the making of the trail.

Staff reporter Nathan Whalen contributed to this article.