Innovation of the Month: Mill Creek A to Z Stewardship Project

Left: A-Z treatment area. Credit: Jonathan Day, USDA Forest Service.
Right: Field Meeting in A-Z treatment area. Credit: Jonathan Day, USDA Forest Service.

The U.S. Forest Service features many different innovations that highlight stories of people across the agency finding creative ways to be more efficient in their work, whether through use of new authorities, new technologies, or new partnerships.

In March 2019, they featured the Mill Creek A to Z Stewardship Project which aimed to conduct beginning-to-end planning and implementation of forest health restoration across 54,000 acres. Multiple entities around the Northeast Washington region including Vaagen Brothers Lumber, the Colville National Forest, NEWFC and Cramer Fish Sciences (performing required data collection and analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)) partnered with each other, elected officials and the public to achieve the project’s goals. These unique partnerships gave the Colville NF increased capacity to implement restoration at a faster pace than it would have been able to with current resources.

To read more about this project, the lessons learned from it, and next steps, visit The US Forest Service website “Innovations Underway” series.