A group of organizations focused on working together for the benefit of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest is one of a number of collaboratives to receive the biggest combined set of grants one of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’ programs has ever awarded.
The DNR announced Sept. 14 it had awarded $425,000 to nine organizations through its Building Forests Partnerships Grant Program. Of that, $50,000 went to the South Gifford Pinchot Collaborative, which operates in Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania, Klickitat and Yakima counties.
The program, intended to increase forest health and resilience, provides grants to forest collaboratives across the state which include organizations across a range of forest-focused interests, from forest conservation to the timber industry, a news release stated. The program has provided close to $1 million to local organizations since 2018.
“I am proud to support forest collaboratives across Washington as they work with us to make our forests more resilient to the devastation of catastrophic wildfires, the damage caused by extreme drought and heat, and the destruction wrought by insect and disease outbreaks,” Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said in the release.
Franz said she was especially proud that this year’s awards were the largest dollar amount.
“Local organizations, along with our federal, tribal and industry partners, are irreplaceable in our all lands, all hands approach to addressing our forest health crisis,” Franz said.
This year’s House Bill 1168 allowed for the latest round of funding, the release stated. The funds have to be used for activities like hiring more staff to support treatment planning, public outreach, and coordination with outside partners.
Each of the recipient collaboratives operate in either a priority planning area defined within the DNR’s 20-Year Forest Health Strategic Plan or a priority watershed as designated within the 2020 Forest Action Plan, the release stated. Grant recipients commit to use their funding in direct support of one or both of those plans.
The department’s funding of forest collaboratives supports planning efforts on more than 150,000 acres of forestland and more than 2,500 acres of forest health treatments since 2017, according to the release.
“This investment from DNR is not only great for the forest collaboratives, it's also vital for improved forest health,” said Nikola Smith, regional partnership coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region. “We can only achieve landscape scale restoration by coming together, finding common ground, and working collectively to achieve shared goals.”
