An ecological "Marshall" plan for national forests
By generating and implementing quality restoration projects in Washington's national forests, Conservation Northwest is helping shift the Forest Service and its mission to one of ecologically driven forest restoration.
Conserve and restore
Conservation Northwest is working to shift the Forest Service's mission towards ecological restoration of national forests. Our "Marshall Plan" for restoration is practical, ambitious, and solution oriented. Its key components are to:
- Make conserving biodiversity and restoring resilient landscapes the primary mission of the Forest Service.
- Increase the Forest Service budget to fully fund restoration needs. The huge costs of fire fighting must be addressed.
- Involve the public through collaborative partnerships that build trust among diverse interest groups and the Forest Service. The process of repairing ecosystems often offers opportunities for win-win solutions that create jobs, produce timber volume, allow for recreation, and stimulate and improve rural economies.
- Take a landscape-based approach by ensuring viable populations of wildlife, healthy streams and clean water, and forests resilient to climate change and natural disturbances requires planning at large scales and being strategic about where management should and should not take place.
- Re-orient the policies and organizational structure of the Forest Service toward restoration.
- Better integrate the latest science into management.
Conservation Northwest director Mitch Friedman helped envision the Restoration Marshall Plan as a solution to tough times for our forests and wildlife, and has spoken about the plan to the Forest Service and others around the country. “Our ecosystems need more than to be repaired. They also need to be prepared for the effects of climate change," says Mitch.
Chief Kimbell, with her present emphasis on Climate Change, Water and Kids, points out that among the needs are establishing landscape-level forest conditions most likely to sustain forest ecosystems in a changing climate by preventing and reducing barriers—like forest fragmentation—to aid species migration; and making forests more resistant to fires, insects, and disease, and other major disturbances.
“As we set out to both repair and prepare our ecosystems, perhaps a corollary can be found in the Marshall Plan by which societies came together after World War II to rebuild a ruined Europe for a common future. It’s a handy analogy, serving as a call for previously warring factions to come together for what will surely be an expensive but essential and ultimately worthwhile undertaking.”
