Latest News About The Pinchot Partners

Pinchot Partners Restoration Plan Environmental Assessment

The Pinchot Partners collaborative group announced the release of a plan to thin and restore 1,540 acres of plantations on federal lands outside of Packwood, Washington. The Pinchot Partners completed the Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Plantation Restoration Project themselves, which is unusual in that the job is generally completed by the Forest Service. The EA was prepared to assess the potential effects of restoration-based commercial thinning and other restoration work that will take place on the GPNF.

 

Pinchot Partners Board Member Bill Little commented, “We hope this project will be able to provide reliable jobs for local area contractors and restore plantation stands to accelerate habitat development for spotted owls, woodpeckers, small mammals and many other species.”

 

Restoration work will include 1,540 acres of thinning, snag and down wood creation, road maintenance and removal, aquatic restoration and invasive weed treatment. The project will likely be offered as a series of stewardship contracts that combine thinning works with other restoration projects such as road decommissioning of high impact roads and culvert replacements. The project areas selected are close to town, creating easy access for local contractors. The planning for this project was coordinated with the appropriate federal, state and local agencies and local tribes.

 

We developed this project to put the Pinchot Partners long term vision to work on the ground. Our mission is to create quality and local jobs and benefit watershed health, and we are working to break down all the barriers that exist to creating a stable program of this work in the local area. “We heard one of the barriers was in the federal planning process, so we took it on ourselves to look for a solution,” said Pinchot Partners Board Member Emily Platt.

To review the Environmental Assessment please download the following document, PinchotPartnersEA.