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Community Collaboration
Conservation Northwest has been hard at work across Washington State to create models that unite conservationists and woodsworkers and that rebuild and reinvest in our rural communities.
A tool for reinvesting in rural communities
Conservation Northwest has been hard at work across Washington State creating programs that unite conservationists and woodsworkers. These programs rebuild and reinvest in our rural communities and provide for the needs of America’s future generations.
"Working for the health of rural communities is not something the environmental community considered when they set out to protect forests and wildlife, but it became a driving factor. In our interconnected web of life, honoring people and their needs is an important strand to ensure the health of ecosystems." - Regan Smith, who, while working for Conservation Northwest, helped found the Pinchot Partnership
- For example, Conservation Northwest is an active participant in the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, working together with community leaders, timber industry workers, and state and federal land managers to promote projects that stay out of ancient forest and roadless areas, and ending years of conflict concerning forest management in northeast Washington.
- Together with the Gifford Pinchot Task Force we were active in creating and sustaining the Pinchot Partnership. Partnership members share a vision of creating restoration projects in national forest second-growth plantations that employ local contractors while retaining all old growth on the landscape and keeping forests healthy, diverse, and wildlife friendly.
Unique efforts
Each collaborative effort by the partnership is unique in its goals and objectives. Some efforts have emerged from opportunities rather than from conflict, but all carry the common thread of focusing on common ground activities that provide jobs and/or wood products while addressing high-priority restoration needs on our public lands. While Conservation Northwest prides itself on providing leadership and expert restoration knowledge for each of these groups, the success of each effort is wholly dependent on the many varied individuals that contribute to each group.
By participating in collaborative efforts, Conservation Northwest is blunting the wedge that some political interests seek to drive between ecology and economy, rural and urban people, and the east and west sides of the state. The more that we can meet our conservation challenges with solutions instead of raw conflict, the better we sustain and build support in all things we do to protect Northwest forests and wildlife.
For more on the importance of collaboration in conservation efforts, read Mitch Friedman's article in Grist.
The Red Lodge Clearinghouse is a very useful natural resource collaboration site.