Cascade Checkerboard Project

Railroad land grants over 100 years ago have left us the "checkerboard" pattern of ownership in the central Cascades. The Checkerboard Project seeks to improve the management of these lands by returning key blocks of habitat to public ownership and to insure protection and restoration of the ecosystem in the management of both public and private lands.

Past issues included land exchanges between national forests and Plum Creek Timber Company and Weyerhaueser. The Project has also supported purchases of lands, primarily from timber companies, for addition to the national forests and state conservation areas. The Sierra Club was a member of The Cascades Conservation Partnership, which raised over $16 million in private funds to acquire key habitat lands and donate them to those conservation units. Another accomplishment of the project is the habitat conservation plan for Seattle's Cedar River Watershed, that eliminated commercial logging, and established a goal of ecological restoration.

A key goal of the Project is to maintain habitat connections near Snoqualmie Pass - including adding wildlife bridges on I-90 and retaining wildlife corridors in the expansion of the ski areas. The Project is also working on acquisition of inholdings in the national forests, retaining private forestland in the foothills in forest, and the pending revision of the land management plan for the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forests.

The Checkerboard Project publishes a quarterly newsletter, and sponsors an outings day each July and a service trip in the spring.

For recent Checkerboard activities and news go to the Chapter News page: news

For more information, please contact the committee chair, Charlie Raines.