The upper and middle Twisp watershed has been reassessed and a promising restoration project is emerging

After the upper and middle Twisp River watersheds were dropped from the Twisp Restoration Project last year following the Cedar Creek Fire, the North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative (NCWFHC) sat down to draft an appropriate project for the area. With help from Resilient Forestry, a Northwest-based consulting firm focused on designing ecologically-oriented forest stewardship plans, members of the Collaborative have worked together to envision a restoration project for the complex upper and middle Twisp watersheds.

The project began by following the Forest Restoration Strategy’s process of a landscape evaluation to identify areas of the forest that have departed from historic stand conditions due to fire suppression and are particularly susceptible in the face of future changes in the climate. Resilient Forestry identified several hundred acres that would benefit from thinning – both noncommercial and some commercial to change stand structure. They also identified thousands of acres that would benefit from prescribed burning. We’re encouraged about the potential of this project to help the land adapt to a changing fire regime by creating a forest that will be resilient and healthy in the face of warming temperatures and drought stress. This project concept will now be passed along to the Forest Service who will be starting the process for developing the project in earnest with scoping early next year. We’ll be sure to let you know when the comment period opens!