Protecting the North Cascades and beyond

The Seattle Times ran a story recently on a campaign to enlarge North Cascades National Park. Our dedicated members have asked me why Conservation Northwest is not more involved in this or other new initiatives to increase protection in the heart of my favorite area, the North Cascades Ecosystem. My answer is that we’re all about protecting the North Cascades and other transboundary ecosystems: we are focusing on different needs and creating a broader vision for the region.

When I started as an activist in the mid-eighties, the old growth and roadless areas of the North Cascades were under intense assault by rampant clearcutting. Thanks to the diligent work of many, including Conservation Northwest, that’s no longer so. The National Center for Conservation Science and Policy estimates that the North Cascades retains 19% of its original old growth plus 19% of its original mature forests. If one looked at subalpine and alpine habitats as well, the proportion under protection would be substantially higher yet. Sadly perhaps, that is more than any other ecosystem in the Northwest, and I’m comfortable with our chances of off-setting risk to these stands through our diligent and effective forest watch work. More, of course, is better, but we allocate our efforts according to relative need and as part of the larger vision.

At Conservation Northwest, we believe there are serious threats to the North Cascades Ecosystem, but they are not coming from the same directions as 20 years ago.

Maintaining connectivity: The North Cascades Ecosystem is not big enough to sustain genetically isolated populations of species like grizzly bear, wolverine, lynx, spotted owl, and other species. We must maintain the habitats that link this ecosystem to populations elsewhere, including the central Cascades (The Cascades Conservation Partnership and I-90 Wildlife Bridges Campaign), Rocky Mountains (the linking geography includes the Columbia Highlands of northeastern WA and the mountain caribou habitat of southeastern BC), and the BC Coast Range (stay tuned). This sort of connectivity has become much more urgent in the face of climate change, against which species and ecosystems will need to adapt by shifting range northwards and having adequate habitat to buffer these changes. Conservation Northwest is deeply involved in efforts to identify and protect connectivity zones across the entire region, including playing a key role in the ad hoc Washington Habitat Connectivity Working Group, which convenes biologists from NGOs and various state and federal agencies to coordinate habitat connectivity work.

Managing growth: If the core of the North Cascades is relatively safe from exploitation, the same is certainly not true of its periphery. Population growth and sprawl in the lowlands on both sides of the mountains is having serious impact. Changing economic conditions have grossly destabilized the timber and agriculture ownerships and practices we used to take for granted. Conservation Northwest is feverishly engaged in work to protect working landscapes from conversion to subdivisions, from the timberlands of the Chuckanut Mountains and Lake Whatcom watershed to ranched grasslands of the Okanogan. We’re involved in protecting habitat on state lands, getting conservation easements on private forests and ranches, and engaged in visionary smart-growth efforts in Whatcom and other counties.

Reviving diversity: Since we’ve protected so much habitat in the core of the North Cascades and Olympics, we think it’s high time we help return wildlife to healthy populations. That’s why we instigated reintroduction of fishers to the Olympics and are doing our mightiest to protect the Cascade’s first wolf pack in almost a century and to help the North Cascades grizzly bears that are just barely holding on. We’re also working for wolverines, lynx, spotted owls, and other species that thankfully still reside in this great ecosystem. Through our engagement in endangered species policy, hunting regulations, research, and other outlets, we work to reestablish and maintain ecosystem functions like predator-prey relationships.

Restoring system health: We are working to increase and improve available habitat through active restoration, removing destructive roads, stabilizing streams, and thinning overgrown dry forest and westside tree plantations to foster structure that better meets the needs of old growth dependent species. We’re doing this work through good-faith collaboration with timber companies, contractors, rural communities, and the Forest Service and other public agencies. I’m quite pleased with our progress and the fact that our collaborative model is being adopted in place of division and an all-or-nothing war, which used to force untenable solutions on all of us.

Protecting old forests: The mature and old-growth forests of the North Cascades are safer, less threatened, than any in the region. This is due to several factors: social (the political support of Seattle), geologic (those mountains are steep!), and geographic (we’re at the northern end of the northern spotted owl’s range, so more owl habitat was required here than further south in the NW Forest Plan). In contrast, classic old growth is still being logged vigorously in southwest Oregon and elsewhere. Conservation Northwest is therefore committed to a regional solution to better protect old forests on federal lands.

In addition to the above work, all of which is undertaken through a variety of partnerships, Conservation Northwest is engaged in conservation work on the BC side of the ecosystem, against a proposed dam in the Similkameen, against a proposed power line in the Methow Valley, and many more threats around the periphery of the North Cascades. We deeply admire the work of partners engaged in these efforts, including various land trusts, river, land, and wildlife conservation groups, and others at the local, regional, and national scale.

Conservation Northwest is still totally committed to protecting the North Cascades. We react to the threats and address the opportunities that are most timely. Since our mission is to protect and connect wildlands from the Coast to the Rockies, we set priorities and strategy from this regional perspective. Washington is blessed to have over 9.5 million acres of protected land, which is 22% of the state, higher than any other but Alaska.

But wait a minute: More than 99% of those protected acres are in the western two-thirds of the state. This is why Conservation Northwest is working so hard to protect the grasslands and Columbia Highlands of the northeastern quarter of the state.

Conservation Northwest supports our comrades working to gain more protected park and wilderness in the North Cascades. That our primary work focuses now on greater relative threats only strengthens the efforts across the region to ensure a healthy future for us, our children, and wildlife!