Restoring healthy forests for people, local communities and wildlife
Collaboration is a vital tactic for creating durable conservation progress. We are proud to be a part of numerous ground-breaking coalitions that address issues crucial to wildlife, wildlands and people.
As part of our Forest Field Program, we’re actively involved in the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative, Tapash Collaborative, Chumstick Wildfire Coalition, Upper Wenatchee Pilot Project, Washington Prescribed Fire Council, Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative, Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group, and serve on Washington’s Forest Health Advisory Committee, as well as other forest and wildlands collaboratives.
As part of the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, Conservation Northwest works with community leaders, timber industry workers, and state and federal land managers promoting projects that protect ancient forest and roadless areas while ending years of conflict around forest management.
March 2018 update: Forest collaboration makes progress in northeast Washington
December 2018: Promoting resilient forests for people and wildlife through the Upper Wenatchee Restoration Pilot Project
Partnering for progress
The collaborative efforts we’re involved in all carry the common thread of focusing on common ground activities that provide jobs and/or wood products while addressing high-priority forest and habitat restoration on our public lands. While Conservation Northwest prides itself on providing leadership and expert restoration knowledge for each of these groups, the success of each effort is dependent on the many varied individuals that contribute to each group. Each collaborative effort is unique in its goals and objectives. Many have emerged from opportunities rather than from conflict.
By participating in collaborative efforts, Conservation Northwest blunts the wedge that some political interests seek to drive between ecology and economy, rural and urban people, and the east and west sides of Washington state. The more that we can meet our conservation challenges with solutions instead of raw conflict, the better we sustain and build support in all things we do to protect Northwest forests and wildlife.
Learn more about collaboratives we are involved in:
- Northeast Washington Forest Coalition
- Chumstick Wildfire Stewardship Coalition
- North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative
- Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group
- Washington Prescribed Fire Council (formerly North Central WA Prescribed Fire Council)
- Little Naches Working Group of the Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative
- Arid Lands Initiative
- Cascadia Partner Forum
- More of our partnerships are available on our Coalitions page!
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More on the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition
Click on the logo above to learn more about the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition! - In northeast Washington, we’re part of an innovative forestry coalition that has worked together since 2002 to find solutions and a better future for the Colville National Forest. The successful collaborative group includes timber mill owners such as Vaagen Bros. Lumber Company, conservationists including Conservation Northwest and The Lands Council, government workers, contract loggers, and many others.
Together participants have moved from controversy to common ground for the Colville National Forest!
Community collaboration on the Colville
What the Coalition has forged through successful collaboration is a ground-breaking plan for the national forest that balances forest restoration with working forests and wilderness protection.
- Collaborative members promote projects with broad public support. All agree that controversial logging practices such as clearcutting, logging of old-growth trees, or logging in roadless areas are not acceptable.
- Working together has brought common ground among people of many different stripes.
- Collaboration has also brought success for forest restoration and timber jobs. For example, the Coalition’s cooperative Quartzite Timber Sale, just an hour north of Spokane, brings second-growth logs to a local mill, while safeguarding the 5,000-acre Quartzite roadless area and its old-growth stands of western red cedar, fir, and pine.
- Forest appeals have stopped, replaced by timber projects all can agree on.
- Broad-based support by people who live in the area.
Origins of the coalition
In 2002, several local leaders met in the Colville City Council chambers to hammer out fundamental agreements that became the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition. Those leaders were Russ Vaagen, manager of Vaagen Brothers Lumber, Tim Coleman of the Kettle Range Conservation Group, consulting forester Maurice Williamson, forester Lloyd McGee, Mike Petersen of The Lands Council, and former Twisp Mayor Jim Doran.
The coalition started by establishing areas of common agreement—rather than areas of disagreement—and applying those standards to decision making: Principles of good forestry, old-growth forest restoration, and wilderness protection.
What coalition members share is the desire to find collaborative solutions that restore damaged forests, protect homes and communities from wildfire, support timber and recreation economies, and protect habitat for wildlife in and around the Colville National Forest.