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
This project was a cooperative effort between WDFW and WDNR due to similar restoration needs, saving time and money by avoiding redundancies in staffing, contracting, and seed source development. WDFW, WDNR, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and the Center for Natural Lands Management cooperative partnerships were utilized to restore prairie and oak habitats in the South Puget Sound region, including coordinated site preparation treatments, seed production, and plug production. Scatter Creek, Mima Mounds, West Rocky Prairie, Rocky Prairie and Bald Hill are home to rare plants, animals, and plant communities of remnant South Puget Sound grasslands and oak woodlands. These sites are of conservation concern due to degradation pressure from a number of threats, including invasive species and altered disturbance regimes. The WWRP project goal was to restore portions of these rare habitats, emphasizing needs for federal- and state-listed threatened and endangered species and WDFW’s Species of Greatest Conservation Need. This Interagency project acquired native seeds and transplants; prepared areas for seeding through prescribed fire and invasive control; conducted seeding and transplanting; controlled high priority invasive grasses and forbs as well as implement integrated Scot’s broom control. Other actions included Oregon spotted frog habitat enhancement at West Rocky Prairie and removal of encroaching conifers at Bald Hill NAP. In all, a total of 790 acres of prairie, grassland balds, and oak habitats were restored and enhanced under this project.