How would you protect and restore 27,000 acres of Central Cascades forest?
A new group in Kittitas County is seeking community input to answer that question: The Checkerboard Partnership brings together an array of energized individuals, organizations and elected officials to permanently protect community access, support economic vitality and enhance conservation and forest health on this now-privately owned land. The group is exploring various ways to preserve the land.
have your say
The Checkerboard Partnership’s community survey is open through the end of October. Share your thoughts here.
Taking its name from the square-mile parcels that cut the Central Cascades - and much of the American west - into an enormous grid during the days of western railroad expansion, the Checkerboard Partnership aims to stitch these blocks back together to streamline management and conservation efforts. Partners have dedicated themselves to this project since June 6, 2019, when an exploratory committee emphatically agreed that protecting the forest is key to Kittitas County’s future.
Time is of the essence. In 2014, The Nature Conservancy secured management of 48,000 acres of checkerboard lands from Plum Creek Timber, pausing the potential for development. As part of the management agreement, we must develop a plan for permanent ownership of the land by the end of 2021, including strategies from land acquisitions to the establishment of a core community forest. Lands under consideration for the Checkerboard Partnership’s permanent protection efforts include 27,000 acres along the I-90 corridor in Upper Kittitas County, in the Cabin Creek, Taneum, and Cle Elum Ridge areas — the backyard for many Kittitas County communities.
collaborative community forests
The Teanaway Community Forest, the first of its kind in Kittitas County, was created in 2013 through the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan collaborative effort. The Teanaway Community Forest is state-owned and co-managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Checkerboard Partnership intends to complement the efforts underway in the Teanaway Community Forest and is working collaboratively with their advisory committee to achieve similar goals for forest health along their shared boundaries.
The proposed community forest lands and other priority conservation areas are adjacent to state and federal lands, including the Teanaway Community Forest, the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest, and the LT Murray Wildlife Area. Many popular trails connect the checkerboard parcels to these public lands. They are home to hundreds of fish and wildlife species, sheltered by mixed conifer forest, and hold long-term potential to be managed as sustainable working forests.
Partnership facilitator Melissa Speeg said the community forest model allows the group to work with state and federal agencies, as well as the Teanaway Community Forest Advisory Committee, to manage the land at a landscape scale.
The partnership includes dedicated community members as well as representatives from local cities and Kittitas County, Kittitas Conservation Trust, Mountains to Sound Greenway, Central Washington University, The Nature Conservancy, HopeSource, local, state and national agencies and the Yakama Nation. The group is soliciting input from Kittitas County residents and visitors about the potential for this land via a survey, available online and on paper at several locations in the community.
Gary Berndt, former Mayor of Cle Elum and Kittitas County Commissioner, is one of the members of the partnership. Berndt sees this as an important opportunity that the community cannot afford to miss out on. “I remember when Plum Creek Timber Company placed approximately 7,500 acres for sale close to Cle Elum and Roslyn and we felt that no one would purchase that, “said Berndt, “Those lands are now the five-star resort Suncadia and it has changed the community’s access and use of the lands they were used to.”
The Checkerboard Partnership’s community survey is open online until the end of October. Paper surveys and dropbox locations include Pioneer Coffee in Cle Elum, Basecamp Books and Bites in Roslyn, The Old #3 in Ronald, The Hitching Post in Easton, the Post Office in Thorp and Jerrol’s in Ellensburg.
If you live, work or play outside in Kittitas County, please take a minute to share your perspective on this landscape with the Checkerboard Partnership!
