Washington's last great place

The Columbia Highlands of northeast Washington help connect the northern Rockies on the east to the North Cascades to the west. The highlands are a largely undeveloped region of of wild forests, mountains, streams, and  glacier-wrought kettles. Today only a small portion of this landscape, that of the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area, is protected as wilderness. But the level of protection and recognition is changing with an emerging management blueprint for conserving these beautiful lands and keeping communities vibrant and connected.

A new book of stories and photos for the first time describes the largely unchanged wildness of the Columbia Highlands, an area we're working hard to protect.

Bridging the Rockies to the Cascades

The Columbia Highlands include a rich diversity of forests and some of the best remaining wildlife habitat, from meadow to mountain, in the Inland and Greater Northwest. It's also a key landscape bridge for large roaming wildlife, including lynx, bears, wolverine, and wolves. Some, such as big horn sheep and moose, are most closely associated with Rocky Mountain fauna. Because two major ecosystems intersect here, the Columbia Highlands is especially rich in plant and animal diversity.

Bringing communities together

A collaborative effort is underway in the Columbia Highlands to protect the landscape, and its denizens, as a whole. As part of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, Conservation Northwest has built a local, cooperative effort to develop an exciting new blueprint for the Columbia Highlands to

• sustain timber industry jobs
• ensure outdoor recreation opportunities
• restore forests, and
• protect wildlife and wilderness.

We also organize hikes, events, and presentations to highlight this little known but important slice of the Rockies in Washington State.