One of The Nature Conservancy in Washington’s first land purchases, in 1966, was meant to protect a rare orange butterfly. Called the silver-bordered fritillary, the butterfly inhabited a patch of soggy land outside Yakima. So we bought that 10-acre bog.
Back then, our mission was simple: preserve places of special ecological value. Mostly, that meant keeping people out.
The silver-bordered fritillary butterfly, a Washington species of concern. Photo by aarongunnar (flickr commons)
Today, that butterfly has disappeared from Moxee Bog. Gone too is the notion that we can wall off isolated, postage-stamp-sized parcels of land, says Director of Conservation James Schroeder.
“We have to work at the scale of whole ecosystems, and to do that we have to work with the people who live, play and work across those ecosystems,” Schroeder said. “To have resilient landscapes, you need resilient communities — and vice versa.”
That evolution in our understanding informs our approach today in the Central Cascades Forest. This enormous landscape stretches from the moist hemlock and silver fir forests near the Cascade Crest, to the dry eastern foothills, where towering ponderosa pine forests meet the shrub steppe. The region also contains much of the headwaters of the Yakima River, which sustains the state’s agricultural heartland, fish and wildlife, and the tribes that have called this place home since time immemorial. With 124 miles of trails, the Central Cascades draws visitors to hike, snowmobile, ski, hunt and fish.
Across these forests, a checkerboard of public and private ownership and a history of intensive logging has led to fragmented forests vulnerable to diseases and catastrophic wildfires. Warmer and drier conditions due to climate change have amplified the risks. Nearly 2.7 million acres of forest in Eastern Washington are in critical need of restoration, a Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service study shows.
Our conservation in Washington’s Cascades Mountains, along with land in the Blackfoot River Valley of Montana, restores the ecological integrity of 250+ square miles of forests, rivers and wildlife habitat. This transaction with Plum Creek is one of the largest land acquisition projects ever undertaken by the Conservancy. Photo by Benjamin Drummond.
For more than 15 years, the Conservancy has worked in the Central Cascades to speed forest recovery by purchasing tens of thousands of acres of former timber lands, reconnecting the historic checkerboard, and collaborating to improve forest health.
Rather than keeping people out, we are inviting them in. We are working with local landowners, snowmobilers, hunters, birders, bikers, and state and federal land managers to design and maintain trails that support recreation while protecting sensitive areas. We are engaging communities to execute forest thinning projects that reduce wildfire risks and protect homes. And we are supporting long-term, collaborative planning that ensures communities will reap sustainable economic benefits from these healthier forests.
“The community has been connected to this land long before The Nature Conservancy was engaged, and they’re going to be connected to this land long after it is transferred to permanent protection,” said Forest Partnerships Manager Darcy Batura. “Our role is to facilitate that in a way that supports community values. By doing that, they will always care for it.”
Forest Collaborative Meets Multiple Needs
In the early 2000s, local residents deeply connected to these forests alerted the Conservancy to an urgent conservation opportunity: Plum Creek Timber was preparing to log old-growth ponderosa pines in the South Central Cascades.
Betsy Bloomfield, who managed the Conservancy’s work in the region at the time, recalls a “steaming-hot July day” when the Yakama Nation’s game biologist walked her “straight up this giant cliff” and into the ponderosa pine forest. “We got to the top of this beautiful plateau, and sure enough, there were these giant yellow-belly pines that were just phenomenally beautiful,” Bloomfield said.
The area also provides critical habitat for elk, big horn sheep and myriad other species. “It is profoundly important biologically,” Bloomfield said.
Bighorn sheep near Oak Creek in the Tieton Canyon. Photo by Cameron Karsten.
These forests are also profoundly important to members of the Yakama Nation, who have hunted, fished, gathered and engaged in spiritual practices on this land for millennia. But the tribes had lost their treaty rights to engage in these activities on portions of their historic territory acquired by timber companies. By purchasing the Plum Creek parcels, the Conservancy could restore tribes’ access.
That access “is critical to us, to be able to practice our way of life,” said Phil Rigdon, superintendent of the Yakama department of natural resources. “These places are a part of who we are and what makes us Yakamas.”
Wildfires in WA forests are increasing due to climate change. The Yakama Nation focuses on community safety and collaboration to ensure healthy land for future generations.
The Conservancy took “a big leap of faith,” Bloomfield said, and purchased 10,000 acres from Plum Creek in the Tieton River basin. Over time, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in turn bought the land from us with grants from the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program — the state’s largest source of public funding for conservation, established with Conservancy leadership in 1989.
Still, Bloomfield said, “just buying the land wasn’t going to be enough.” It needed to be restored, in part by thinning the small trees and brush that had proliferated as a result of decades of fire suppression, making the forests and surrounding communities vulnerable to high-intensity wildfires. And that work needed to be coordinated across a massive area with many different owners.
The Conservancy joined the Yakama Nation and state and federal agencies to form the Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative, giving it the Sahaptin (Yakama) name for “pine tree.” Stewarding 2.3 million acres, the Collaborative is working across boundaries to improve forest and aquatic habitats. The Yakama, who have one of the last timber mills in the region, now hope to take a lead role in restoration thinning that would also provide a sustainable source of employment for their members, Rigdon said.
Reconnecting Forests for Community
In 2014, the Conservancy took an even bigger leap and purchased an additional 48,000 acres of the Plum Creek checkerboard, doubling our land holdings in the state.
At first, some people who had been working and playing in these forests for decades worried that the Conservancy might shut them out, Schroeder said. Instead, we began extensive outreach in nearby communities, tacking up fine-scale maps and asking people what they loved about the forest.
At one meeting, a man walked up to a map and placed a star on it. “This is where my dad’s ashes are sprinkled,” he told Schroeder. The father and son had hiked and hunted together in that forest.
“It drove home that people value the land for so many different reasons,” Schroeder said. “Once we sat down and talked and understood why they cared about this land, we were able to build some really interesting work together.”
Dirt-biking groups, snowmobiling organizations, homeowner associations and others the Conservancy hadn’t routinely partnered with in the past came forward with ideas and support, Schroeder said. Today, those groups help maintain the trails and “act like our eyes in the woods,” he said.
About 20% of the lands we acquired in 2014 have been transitioned to the U.S. Forest Service, but the remaining forests still need permanent protection. “We’ve pushed the pause button on the development threat,” Batura said, “while we work with the community and agency partners to figure out what the best solutions look like.”
One possible solution is a community forest. But first, Batura wanted to be sure that local people were willing to lead the effort. If the Conservancy “is the one doing all the work, then it won’t be sustainable,” she said.
Batura helped lead trips for key partners to learn about different community forest models from Montana to New Hampshire. Since then, communities in the Central Cascades have leaned in and are developing a strategy for a 26,000-acre community forest that encompasses 124 miles of recreational trails and the headwaters of the Yakima River, the region’s lifeblood. Together, community members will decide how to best steward the forests so that they benefit both people and nature for generations to come.
“I think we can create an interdependence where the communities can once again rely on the forests for economic benefits, and the forests can rely on the communities for maintaining ecological health,” Batura said. “It’s symbiotic.”
