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Blanchard Mountain
Blanchard Mountain in the southernmost tip of the Chuckanuts near Bellingham is the only place where the Cascade Mountains meet the sea.
Protecting the land where the Cascades touch the sea
Blanchard Mountain is the only place along the coast where the Cascades connect to salt water. It is the ultimate of green belts: a beloved and well-used place for recreation, respite, and wildness that separates two increasingly populated counties, Skagit and Whatcom.
Learn more about the Blanchard Mountain agreement that resulted from this collaborative process.
Blanchard Mountain is one of many valuable state trust lands, public forests managed by the state Department of Natural Resources. While many of us think of trust lands as benefiting schools, they were established for a number of different beneficiaries, among them the counties. Any revenues from Blanchard Mountain logging, over and above management costs, goes to Skagit County.
Several years ago Randy Walcott, chair of the Mount Baker Group of the Sierra Club, took up the cause of protecting Blanchard Mountain. In December 1998, he formally petitioned the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) requesting that Blanchard Mountain be declared a Natural Resource Conservation Area (NRCA); the agency denied the petition.
In 2001 Conservation Northwest joined Randy and others in their effort to preserve Blanchard Mountain. Our goal is twofold: to both protect Blanchard in perpetuity, and to lead a way for better management of other valuable state trust lands. Blanchard is worth most to the citizens of this state as a functioning, mature forest. But how would we get there?
To break the stalemate, in 2006, the DNR convened a group of diverse interests, including Conservation Northwest and Friends of Blanchard Mountain, and charged them with creating a forest management planf or Blanchard's forests. It was an excellent opportunity for the Board of Natural Resources and DNR staff to work with citizens towards a proactive solution to protect this remarkable mountain and its unique public values.