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 will restore the structure and composition of lowland forest communities on WDNR- and WDFW-managed lands on the western Kitsap peninsula, including portions of Stavis Natural Resources Conservation Area (NRCA) and the Big Beef Creek Unit of the South Puget Sound Wildlife Area. These sites are part of a broader conservation landscape protecting forest, riparian, and estuarine ecosystems and important salmon habitat, and involving a number of entities including WDFW, WDNR, University of Washington, Kitsap County, Point No Point Treaty Council, Hood Canal Environmental Council and the Great Peninsula Conservancy. Restoration will include variable density thinning of young, artificially-regenerated forest stands, planting of under-represented tree and shrub species, and control of key invasive plants that threaten both the restoration areas and adjacent intact forest communities. These efforts will restore the successional trajectory of these forest communities to allow for more natural development of forest conditions and accelerated development of important habitat features such as large trees, snags, and down wood. It will also enhance the diversity of these forest communities and improve the quality of habitat for wildlife, including salmonids by controlling invasive species in riparian areas and accelerating long-term recruitment of large woody debris.