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
WA DNR Natural Areas program will use funding from this grant to restore shrubsteppe habitat at Upper Dry Gulch NAP. Restoration will serve two main functions. First, promoting a healthy ecosystem around a population of state endangered Whited’s milkvetch (Astragalus sinuatus) will protect this rare, locally endemic species from the threats of encroaching invasive weeds and allow for expansion/movement of the population in response to changing climatic conditions. Second, as the northernmost end of a string of protected shrubsteppe with strong connectivity, restoration and preservation of this landscape is vital to the health of wildlife populations, particularly sage steppe obligates. Need for restoration at this site can be tied to two driving forces: historic and current agricultural use and two recent and intense wildfires. This has led to the introduction and spread of invasive weed species, lack of shrub density, low species richness, and degradation of ephemeral stream channels. Continued, unauthorized, grazing by cattle from neighboring properties directly threatens Whited’s milkvetch as cattle travel through and graze in the population’s footprint. Restoration will focus on four main projects: upland restoration, riparian restoration, spring restoration, and fence construction. These projects will build wildlife friendly fencing, control annual and perennial invasive weeds, increase total shrub cover, and increase plant species richness across the work sites.