Category Overview
The State Lands Restoration and Enhancement category provides funding to two state agencies to help repair damaged plant and animal habitat. These grants focus on resource preservation and protection of public lands. Projects in this category help bring important natural areas and resources back to their original functions by improving the self sustaining and ecological functionality of sites.
Project Highlights
The Department of Natural Resources will use this grant to restore 135 acres of forest and riparian habitat within the Woodard Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area (NRCA). The 3,400-acre NRCA is located in Thurston County, a few miles north of Olympia. The site is regionally recognized for its outstanding environmental education and low-impact recreation values. The NRCA, situated in the Henderson Inlet watershed, protects shorelines and estuaries, freshwater wetlands and streams, a small lake, and habitat for multiple species of wildlife. Restoration will contribute to the overall management and ecological resiliency of the NRCA, improving water quality in North Lake, and restoring forested shoreline communities in Henderson Inlet. At the Shincke Road worksite, forest previously converted to hay fields will be converted back to lowland coniferous forest through physical removal of pasture grass roots and planting native trees and shrubs. This will support birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and the thousands of bats for which Woodard Bay is famous. Forest succession at the Witham Road worksite, where maples are dying, will be aided by blackberry removal and conifer planting. Trees planted at both sites will increase habitat connectivity and potential nesting habitat for the hundreds of herons and thousands of cormorants within the NRCA that need to protect their rookeries from predating bald eagles and peregrine falcons.