$1.5M state grant will help protect Washougal River watershed

The Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO) has awarded the Columbia Land Trust, a Vancouver-based nonprofit that works to conserve the land, water and wildlife of the Columbia River region from The Dalles, Oregon, to the Pacific Ocean, with a $1.5 million grant to buy 307 acres in Skamania County to preserve one of the oldest and largest remaining private forests in the Washougal River watershed.

The purchase also will conserve more than three miles of shoreline habitat on the West Fork Washougal River and perennial tributary Jackson Creek for salmon species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to the RCO website. The land has steeply sloped forests of mature Douglas-fir, cedar and hemlock.