Kettle Face Project a Collaborative Forestry Success Story

Kettle Falls, WA. - The Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, local citizens and the U.S. Forest Service met September 19 to take a firsthand look at the success of the collaborative Kettle Face Project that was recently completed in the Deadman and Matsen Creek area of Ferry County, in the Colville National Forest.

Since 2010, the Colville National Forest has planned and implemented an aggressive forest landscape restoration strategy to improve water quality, wildlife habitat and restore forest resiliency & structure. The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act has provided up to a million dollars a year to implement projects that have been collaboratively designed to restore healthy watersheds in the Colville National Forest in the Kettle and San Poil Rivers of Ferry County.

The Forest Service and Forestry Coalition co-hosted a field monitoring tour in September to review forestry prescriptions used in the Kettle Face Project area. Project goals included watershed scale forest restoration, reduction of wildfire risk, providing logs to local mills, promote hardwood and conifer regeneration and increase development of larger diameter trees.

Scientific research findings note that while the number of larger diameter trees (over 16” diameter) has increased across the Colville National Forest, the patch size and distribution of large treed stands are well below historic conditions.

“The Kettle Face Project demonstrates the success of collaboration to improving project analysis and design,” said Russ Vaagen, president of the Forestry Coalition. “The more we do collaboratively to help restore forest health similar to historic forest conditions and assist to improve the efficiency of the National Environmental Policy Act, the healthier our Colville National Forest will be.”

For more information visit www.NewForestryCoalition.org