Upper Wenatchee

Alongside our partners, Blue Forest is exploring opportunities to pilot a FRB in the Wildland Urban Interface to protect these communities. The proposed Upper Wenatchee I FRB footprint is within the planned and permitted Upper Wenatchee Pilot Project (UWPP), a landscape-scale restoration effort on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire to these communities and the surrounding landscape. Blue Forest recognizes that the Upper Wenatchee River Basin makes up the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary homelands of Indigenous Peoples who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial. Our partners hold relationships with the Yakama Nation and Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the past, present, and future Peoples of the greater region.

The proposed Upper Wenatchee I FRB project would include around 5,000 acres of fuels reduction and accompanying aquatic restoration across a 15,000 acre footprint, protecting communities, infrastructure, and habitat. Chelan County Natural Resources Department will lead project management and implementation of project activities, in coordination with the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and local partners. Activities in the pilot FRB would focus on forest health treatments including fuels reduction, prescribed burning, and culvert replacement. The surrounding landscape is a popular recreation and tourism destination and home to multiple threatened and endangered species. In addition to reducing fire risk and increasing community fire safety, the project is expected to support the recovery of these species, protect critical infrastructure, protect and enhance water supply, and foster economic development in nearby communities.