On the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains, forest landowners including The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and the state Department of Natural Resources are working together to plan for controlled burning to reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fire.

Controlled burning has been a staple of forest management for many years. It’s a way to thin out undergrowth that has the potential to fuel catastrophic fires that destroy the forest and threaten communities.

What’s new here is the Tapash Sustainable Forests Collaborative has enabled landowners to plan together for controlled fires across jurisdictional lines, using natural barriers rather than artificial property lines.

The Nature Conservancy, US Forest Service, and Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and Department of Natural Resources, and the Yakama Nation have joined in the collaborative to address forest health across about 2 million acres in the eastern Cascades.

This spring, they planned for their first cross-jurisdictional controlled burns, in the area of the Oak Creek Wildlife Area, where the Forest Service, the Conservancy, and WDFW own land in a mixed checkerboard of square-mile parcels.

Nature picture credits (left to right): Photo © Betsy Bloomfield/TNC, Photo © Charles Gurche (Forests).