Whatcom County will receive more than $5 million in grant funds from the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) to support the expansion of the Stewart Mountain Community Forest initiative.
The Streamflow Restoration Competitive Grant, awarded by the DOE in early October, will include $5.517 million for the county’s public works department, and will go toward purchasing land around Stewart Mountain as part of the community forest initiative.
The community forest is a collaborative project between Whatcom County, the Evergreen Land Trust Association, the Nooksack Indian Tribe, the Whatcom Land Trust and Western Washington University, with plans to convert 5,500 acres into a restored forest.
The Stewart Mountain Community Forest initiative will preserve about 6,000 acres of land currently owned by private timber companies. (Map courtesy of Stewart Mountain Community Forest Initiative)
Much of the land is currently owned by private logging companies.
“We believe that we can manage our forests in ways that sort of bring [commercial and conservation] priorities together,” Alex Jeffers, Whatcom Land Trust’s conservation manager, told the Cascadia Daily News in June. “We have all of this forest land in our county, but when we manage it in these really segmented ways, there’s a lot of lost opportunity.”
Whatcom County committed $1.5 million earlier this year toward the purchase of the first piece of the Stewart Mountain Community Forest initiative. The first purchase, a 550-acre mostly riparian zone along the South Fork of the Nooksack River, cost around $2.345 million, with $1.5 million from the county and another $300,000 from the Evergreen Land Trust, according to council documents.
“There are ways that we can manage this space that promote the health of the forest, and contributes to cooler, cleaner water in the tributaries and the South Fork but also allows for active management, commercial thinning and selective harvests,” Jeffers said. “Being able to maintain these industry jobs in the woods and our forest economy that supports a lot of our residents here is important as well.”
The Nooksack River is rife with ongoing health concerns, particularly related to water temperature. Water temperatures in the river continue to test higher than healthy for fish populations. Mature trees, though, provide shade for the river, and in turn, cool river waters in the South Fork, according to a 2018 report from DOE.
The grant from DOE will support increasing streamflows, improve water quality and advance salmon recovery in the South Fork “by taking an active approach to forest stewardship and implementing improved forest management practices across the property,” according to DOE’s water resources program.
Through the Streamflow Restoration Competitive Grants, DOE will fund 26 high-priority projects in 22 watersheds to the tune of $35 million this year.
