FOREST HEALTH AND RESILIENCY DIVISION AUGUST 2020 Federal Lands Program Summer 2020 Update The State Department of Engineering support is one of the most Natural Resources’ Federal Lands requested state services, creating a Program (FLP) has reached a need for full-time FLP engineers to BACKGROUND stabilization phase of development as support these requests. The program There are more than 2.7 million projects, staffing and funding sources now supports two full-time, statewide acres of unhealthy forests in align for implementation. The program engineers. They bring licensed expertise Washington that have grown uses the Good Neighbor Authority to projects, and combined with state unnaturally dense from past (GNA) extensively to conduct critical toolsets, help reduce costs and increase management practices and restoration across Washington. outputs. more than a century of fire Restoration projects are being Funds for program staff and projects suppression. Restoring forests implemented on five major national come from federal and state sources, as improves their natural resilience forests throughout the state, and pilot well as revenue derived from to wildfire, insect infestation projects on cross-state national forests commercial restoration projects. and disease, and improves fish and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and wildlife habitat. land are being explored. BY THE NUMBERS To date, FLP has engaged in 46 federal • 46 projects on federal land: 20 are The Washington State lands projects in various stages of commercial restoration and 26 are Department of Natural Resources completion. As of June, 12 GNA timber noncommercial. Six are complete, 20 are (DNR) Federal Lands Program sales were awarded in four of the five underway, and 20 are being planned. and the U.S. Department of major national forests. Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service • 36.4 million board feet sold through are increasing the pace and scale Program staffing now spans the state commercial restoration, 22.9 million of those of forest health treatments and with 15.75 full-time equivalent (FTE) board feet sold in the 2020 fiscal year. restoration projects in forests staff dedicated to federal land • 3,097 acres of wildfire-fuels reduction work, across Washington state through restoration projects. Positions are a 2,600 of those acres completed in 2020 with mixture of permanent, project and non- the mutual benefits of an 1,600 more acres planned. permanent status. agreement called the Good Neighbor Authority between the two agencies.

It authorizes the state to act as a trusted agent of the federal government to accomplish a variety of forest, range, and watershed restoration in national forests with the additional benefit of using state processes, which are sometimes more efficient.

An elk browses foraging habitat created earlier this year by a GNA restoration timber sale in the Snoqualmie area.

GAME CAMERA IMAGE FOREST HEALTH AND RESILIENCY DIVISION AUGUST 2020 JOHN MARSHALL © PHOTOGRAPHY Project spotlight: Skamania County

The Washington State Department of Lands Revolving Account. Revenue Natural Resources signed an agreement in generated from GNA timber sales within spring 2020 with Skamania County for a national forest are deposited in the road improvements in the Gifford Pinchot account to fund critical watershed Timber from a forest thinning National Forest and to support watershed restoration projects and make habitat restoration on federal land. improvements for fish and wildlife in the The new partnership, made possible same forest. Overseen by DNR’s Federal under the GNA agreement between DNR Lands Program, the Skamania County WE COMMEND and the USDA Forest Service, will provide forest-restoration thinnings will improve DNR FOR about $300,000 in state and federal funds deer and elk foraging habitat and DILIGENTLY for Skamania County crews to pave and support healthy and complex forest WORKING TO FIND A stabilize six, 100-foot sections on a 5-mile conditions in the Gifford Pinchot. SEAT AT THE TABLE stretch of Forest Road 25. The project will Eighty percent of Skamania County is FOR US. OUR HOPE IS prevent sediment runoff into streams and federal forestland. The Gifford Pinchot’s THAT OVER TIME help maintain critical infrastructure in the Forest Road 25 is one of the few major THESE MUTUALLY forest to support rural economies and roadways that connects northern and BENEFICIAL recreation access. southern parts of the county, and it PROJECTS WILL LEAD A portion of the project’s funding comes receives heavy traffic from commercial and passenger vehicles. TO INCREASING THE from the state’s Natural Resources Federal SCALE AND SCOPE OF SHARED STEWARDSHIP PROJECTS, WHICH 7 5 COULD PROVIDE A REVENUE STREAM TO LOCAL 3 GOVERNMENT 4 ENTITIES.”

TOM LANNEN 1 Skamania County CURRENT Commissioner GNA WORK MORE INFORMATION Trevor McConchie Assistant Division Manager Federal Lands Program 2 6 [email protected] (360) 688-0321 NOTE: Pink areas indicate DNR state trust land. www.dnr.wa.gov/GNA

1. : Removing barriers to fish 4. Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest: Commercial and other aquatic life, supporting the development of and non-commercial restoration and fuels reduction. mature forests, and riparian monitoring on state land, the 5: : Work includes National Olympic and Olympic National Forest. Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) environmental planning 2. Gifford-Pinchot National Forest: Commercial and with the forest, tribes, local forest collaborative and other non-commercial forest restoration to enhance the entities on a more than 90,000-acre high-priority forest development of old-growth characteristics. restoration area. 3. Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest: 6: : Developing restoration Innovated approaches to the Bandera Restoration Thin projects to help achieve forest health objectives. that retooled a three-time no-bid project to successfully 7. Idaho Panhandle National Forest: Beginning talks to award a sale. expand GNA implementation in the near future.