NCW Forest Health Collaborative celebrates 5th anniversary

The North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative celebrated their five year anniversary at the Chelan County Fire District 3 station in Leavenworth on June 6. Lloyd McGee, the Washington Forest Program Manager for the Nature Conservancy, is the co-chair of the collaborative.
“I have been here since the beginning. We’ve been together for five years. Today is our celebration for our fifth anniversary. Our first meeting was up at Mission Ridge Ski Lodge. We have 22 organizations that are members and a great diversity of folks,” McGee said. “Forest products companies, conservation organizations, state and local and federal partners, tribal partners, private landowners, which live within the landscapes where we are conducting projects.”
The focus of the group is to help the Forest Service. Five years ago, the leadership of the Forest Service reached out to the communities for help, McGee said.
“There is a great need to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration because of the mega fires which are taking place,” McGee said. “We have some epidemics of insects and diseases within our forest that lead to these mega fires, so the need of the Forest Service is to bring in partners that have expertise to build a stronger support systems for all these projects.”
In terms of selecting the projects, McGee said they have developed a priority list for the next five years of the watersheds and landscapes based on the ecological needs of the forest. The data collected reflects the ecological needs, both for terrestrial and aquatic.
He said there are a lot of land allocations that tells them what they can and can’t do.
“We really have to look at where can you do active management and where can you not do active management. It’s really a key to focus in on the areas that have the highest priority ecological needs and are available and accessible for active management,” McGee said.
Focusing on the aquatic is an important aspect, because the health of the uplands helps to determine the health of the aquatics, he said. There are listed salmon and other fish that have to be managed. The group consults with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service.
A lot of attention is paid to these important waterways and aquatic systems, he said. A typical collaborative project involves upland terrestrial work, reducing fuels, enhancing habitat and improving forest resilience to disturbances like insects, disease and fire.
“That would include thinning and prescribed burning. When you think about, there’s only a few things you can do actively. That’s using mechanical treatment or prescribed burning or managing wildfire. All those things can be somewhat controversial depending on people’s perspectives. That’s why we need to build support,” McGee said.
The collaborative wants to reach out to the public and get input to build a support base for the projects early on, he said. Thinning and prescribed fire are things usually done by the Forest Service.
McGee said the role of the collaborative has been to increase the scale of that work.
“An example of that is the upper Wenatchee Valley pilot project. That project was going to be the big meadow and lower Chiwawa, two landscapes or watersheds. That was going to be about 30,000 acres. We, as a collaborative, really strongly recommended we increase that to four watersheds, including the Lake Wenatchee and Wenatchee River/Beaver Creek watershed and made it 75,000 acres,” McGee said.
The goal is to increase the scale and pace of the project so it is out the door before fire comes.
“Right now, we’re in the middle or hiring a planning/consulting firm that will help Forest Service do all the planning for that 75,000 acres because the Wenatchee River Ranger District did not have the staff capacity to do the 75,000 acres. Thirty-thousand acres was going to be a big enough challenge for them,” he said. “We went out and advocated for a proposal for $2.2 million to get it from supplemental hazardous fuels in Washington, D.C. and put it on this pilot project to pay for all this good work. After about a year and a half, we were awarded those federal funds. Now, we have to provide a 50 percent match.”
McGee said they are working on a match right now, which would come from in-kind contributions and possible state and private grants. Meanwhile, they are moving the Upper Wenatchee pilot project forward, doing the analysis for planning to get to the point where they can do the active management.
It all goes well, they would like to start the project in the spring of 2020.
“We’re really shooting for that. That is an increase in pace in terms of these other projects. Chumstick must have taken five years. It’s been implemented, but we need quicker pace and larger scale if we’re going to get to the restoration needs that are in central Washington,” McGee said.
The cause for celebration after five years is they’ve been able to build good relationships. McGee said there is such diversity and different perspectives among all the groups, but they are still able to talk to each other.
“You might remember in the old days, during the timber wars, when conservation and industry we’re not able to talk to each other. There was a lot of litigation and appeals. We’ve pretty taken care of the appeals and that’s because we’ve built such a support base,” he said.
Patrick Haggerty with the Cascadia Conservation District said he really likes the focus on the diversity of the different members in the collaborative, conservation organizations and timber industry representatives.
“That has been the true power of bringing those folks to the table early on in the planning process. That’s resulted in not only better planning but also increasing the pace and scale,” Haggerty said. “For the conservation district, this collaborative looks at a pretty large landscape, all the way from the Canadian border to Kittitas County. As they’ve taken on this Upper Wenatchee pilot project, we’ve really gotten involved as a conservation district because we work with private landowners.”
There are a lot of private landowners in the Upper Wenatchee project area that are doing a lot of work to Firewise their homes, creating defensible space around their communities and neighborhoods, Haggerty said.
The conservation district works planning projects with these landowners with forest lands of 20-40 acres.
“Often times, one of their landowner objectives is wondering what the Forest Service is doing. It’s been important for us to get involved with this planning process because we want the Forest Service to be doing its work ‘next to all this work I’m doing around my house,’” Haggerty said.
“The collaborative has been one more opportunity to get involved in that conservation, bringing some of that landowner perspective in the collaborative process early on. Of course, with all these processes, there is a robust public comment period that is built into the NEPA planning process.”
Haggerty said the collaborative has really pushed the Forest Service and worked together to come up with new ideas and approaches to elevate public awareness and communication. For Haggerty, this has been a key takeaway. “I look forward to seeing how that plays out with the Wenatchee project. This project is still early in the planning stage. Lloyd talked a lot about this work that could potentially be done. The public involvement has not even begun. We’re looking forward to seeing how far beyond we can go from that letter in the newspaper that tells folks this project is happening,” Haggerty said.
There will be opportunities to hear about the project at the farmer’s market in Plain and other community events so people can put in their two-cents throughout but also have the opportunity to formally comment on the process, Haggerty said.
The NCW Forest Health Collaborative was actually the brainchild of the Upper Columbia River Salmon Recovery Board.
“Back in 2012, our board decided to look into forming a NCW Forest Health Collaborative so that we could engage in this conversation about forest and fish. We realized after doing salmon recovery for several years that we needed that upland component in salmon recovery. They really are one in the same,” said Barbara Carrillo, Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board outreach coordinator and NCW Forest Health Collaborative outreach workgroup coordinator. “Our uplands affect our watersheds from everything to debris, forest fire, cold water refuges for rearing and spawning. We understood at this time that salmon recovery has a difficult time without engaging that upland component.”
Since Chelan County is 70 percent federal land, Carrillo said they realized this collaborative could be created.
“We could have these wonderful partners like Forest Service, timber, non profits and all these people that want to participate in a collaborative process to achieve recovery and restoration for our forests and fish,” she said. “The NCW Forest Health Collaborative was born out of this Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board. We facilitate the meetings. We work on getting people together quarterly. We have a projects workgroup and a steering committee.
“Our projects workgroup consists of many of our members and the Forest Service. We look at actual projects and we work together to accelerate restoration and recovery.”
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.