The story of conservation in the Northwest

The native peoples of America were its first conservationists. Some 200 tribes lived in the Northwest before settlers of European ancestry arrived. Native land-use patterns still affect the Northwest landscape in often profound ways, such as the opening up of camas root prairies and beargrass savannas.

Since then, in the last century, Washington State has been one of the nation’s conservation leaders. Two of America’s first national parks, Rainier and Olympic, are here, and Washington has a higher percentage of its land base in protected status than any other of the contiguous states. Conservation Northwest is honored to work on the trail blazed by historic efforts of the Mazamas, the Mountaineers, North Cascades Conservation Council, and other pioneering and passionate conservation groups and individual leaders.

We are also proud to have continued that legacy by leading bold, innovative, and winning efforts from our modest beginnings working to protect our last ancient forests. Unique strategies and campaigns led by Conservation Northwest include the Ancient Forest Rescue Expedition in 1990-91, the Cascades International Alliance in 1992, the Loomis Forest Fund in 1999, and The Cascades Conservation Partnership at the turn of the millennium. Today, community-based collaborative efforts are important to us to restore health to degraded forest lands.

These strategies have not only succeeded in saving vast acreages. They have built the strength of the environmental movement by bringing new supporters, demonstrating that our wild forests can be more valuable as trees than as logs, and finding efficiencies through coalitions that combine the strengths of the many groups in our movement.

We at Conservation Northwest honor and continue the Northwest’s tradition of leadership in conservation because our natural and human communities of this remarkable landscape need and deserve at least as much, and because future generations of people and wildlife will judge us not by our thoughts and efforts, but by our legacy on the ground.