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Mt. Rainier Gateway Initiative
(Click map and use your browser's zoom feature to see details)
The Nisqually Land Trust’s Mount Rainier Gateway Initiative is an ambitious, five-phase plan to permanently protect 4,500 acres of threatened forests in the upper Nisqually watershed, near the most popular entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. These forests contain important habitat for spotted owls, marbled murrelets, bald eagles, elk, cougar, and many other species.
The Initiative will create sustainable, family-wage forestry and tourism jobs by applying innovative ecological practices to working forests and safeguarding the area’s scenic beauty and recreational opportunities. By preventing deforestation, the Initiative will help protect water quality down through the lower watershed, i
ncluding fresh water for the Nisqually Delta and more than 60,000 people in Thurston and Pierce counties.
The Land Trust has already completed Phase One (see map), but with an estimated total cost of $18 million, the Initiative remains the most difficult challenge we have yet undertaken. But it is also a tremendous opportunity to practice landscape scale conservation—and to pass a treasured resource on to our children and grandchildren. With your help, we can succeed!
Land Trust Executive Director Joe Kane overlooking forests protected by Phase One of the Initiative, which included the purchase of 404 acres of timberlands and wildlife habitat in the Upper Nisqually Valley, near the town of Ashford and the main entrance to Mount Rainier National Park (press release).Â
Four more phases remain to complete the project.
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Logging permits have already been issued for these forests, in Phase Two, which include tree stands as old as 268 years.