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
Cultural Resource surveys were completed for approximately 1,487 acres of projects implemented for upland forestry management including pre-commercial thinning, commercial thinning, broadcast burning, and pile burning. Restoration signage was not completed as a part of this project primarily because of the delay in completion of the commercial thinning work which was only a couple weeks prior to grant expiration. The on-the-ground work took priority and it was decided to preserve funding for that. A forest management and restoration kiosk is still planned and will be completed with a WDFW funding source. Upland forestry stand management was completed on 235 broadcast burning acres of the Cougar Canyon Prescribed Fire in spring of 2021 and fall of 2022. An additional 349 acres of commercial thinning were completed in December of 2022 as part of the Windy Point Commercial Thin area. To accomplish the thinning, there was also significant road costs associated with accessing the commercial timber on site to effectively transport it to market. This is an important aspect as good roads are friendly to the environment in that they do not allow for fine sediment delivery to water courses or provide safety or air quality hazards through excessive dust and rut development. To accomplish this, a lignin product was applied to the main haul route in early fall of 2022 to mitigate these threats. Throughout the duration of the project 980 acres were also treated by pre-commercial thinning activities, and associated piling and burning to mitigate slash hazards in key areas such as roadsides. This project was completed timely and effectively with no major cost or scope amendments, although the project manager left our agency prior to completion of the project.