Sometimes you really have to feel and touch a problem in order to solve it. Our board of trustees spend a lot of time strategizing and facilitating solutions to our region’s biggest conservation challenges. But last week, they got out on the land and experienced work in our state’s forests up-close and personal.
After hiking through a small piece of our 48,000-acre Central Cascades forest, our trustees visited Jolly Mountain where a fire burned through last summer. With training from Washington Forest Manager Kyle Smith, trustees donned hard-hats, grabbed shovels and re-planted just a small portion of the burned area.
The experience left trustees energized to tackle the increasing threat of catastrophic fire and the work we can do to protect communities, livelihoods and natural resources. Check out photos from the day below!
Photos © Hannah Letinich
The Nature Conservancy is working on a new and creative forest restoration project on Cle Elum Ridge, called the “How Go Unit,” within the Central Cascades Forest. This “selective thinning” project will reduce fire risk, create healthy forests and support recreational access and natural habitat.
TNC lands in Eastern Washington are now reopened for normal recreation and public access. These lands initially closed on July 23 due to extreme fire danger.
We’re working to protect the Taneum Watershed in the ancestral territory of the Yakama Indian Nation: home to rare and endangered fish and wildlife species, headwaters of the Yakima River, and epic recreational opportunities.
An exciting new program funded by the Washington State Legislature will support six community forest projects around the state. The Capital Budget includes $16.3 million for this new Community Forest Program administered by the Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO). The six projects have been driven by local communities in Chelan, Jefferson, Pierce, Klickitat, Kittitas, and Kitsap Counties.
The TREX program does what no one else is doing in fire management: It provides a cooperative burning model that meets the needs of diverse entities, private landowners and the community—incorporating local values and issues to build the right kinds of capacity in the right places.
In the forests along Cle Elum ridge above the town of Roslyn, heavy machinery has chewed through small trees and underbrush, grinding the shrubbery into chips in seconds, all in the name of forest health and reduced risk of wildfire.
Grinding and chipping the trees into smaller pieces increases the surface area, and once those smaller chips are on the ground and in contact with the soil, they can break down faster and quickly reduce the fire hazards on the landscape.
Satellite information of lightning strike frequency and vegetation moisture will better inform local land managers and can help us target areas to initiate forest health projects.
What exactly do forests have to do with water? Forests are the most effective land cover for maintenance of water quality.
We are celebrating a milestone in a long-term project to protect and restore the forests along I 90 as the U.S. Forest Service prepares to acquire 4,814 acres of the Central Cascades forest with the support of the Land and Water Conservation Fund
A bill in the state Senate would fund much-needed wildfire prevention, suppression and preparedness activities, investing in the health of Washington’s iconic forests and the resilience of our communities.