Marine Mammals
Wildlands and Biodiversity
of Washington State
In 1998, PBI produced a report titled Wildlands of Washington State. For this report, we mapped the remaining wild/roadless areas, 1000 acres and greater, on all ownerships and discussed the ownership pattern that emerged. We focused our analysis and discussions on the roadless areas in the National Forests and compared the actual roadless areas to the official “Inventoried Roadless Areas” – which often ignored much of the real roadless land. This work and subsequent work was widely distributed and was used fairly extensively by the Wild Washington Campaign and related conservation groups in efforts to project roadless areas.
It has been over ten years since this report was written. There have been significant changes since 1998 and we are now completing a project to update this study with current information and to add several new layers of information about the great contribution that wildlands make to biodiversity in Washington State. This work will focus on wildlands in all ownerships, not just federal land. It will emphasize the contribution that multiple ownership roadless areas make to state-wide biodiversity.
Goals
The primary goal of this project is to provide up-to-date information on wildlands in the state that be used by the conservation community in efforts to ensure intelligent management of these lands. We also hope to draw attention to high conservation priority areas that have the greatest biological significance. Some of these areas are not well know and not the subject of current conservation actions.
The information resources developed by PBI in this project can be important tools for landscape planning and conservation decision-making. We will produce a data rich decision-support-system that can aid land managers and conservationists with an objective conservation prioritization tool to facilitate better decision-making. The information we develop in this project will provide land managers and conservationists with a credible, scientific basis needed to effectively manage and protect wildlands. It will also be an invaluable tool for long-term strategic planning. Without this depth of information and analytical capacity applied to establishing conservation priorities, wildland conservation efforts will tend to be opportunistic and reactive in nature.
Our goal is to provide scientifically credible information resources that can be accepted by all stakeholders and can further an informed dialogue on the fate of Washington State's unprotected wildlands.
If you are interested in participating in this project, we welcome your support as either a volunteer, donor, or conservation partner. Please contact us for additional information or visit our volunteer page. For a high-quality print version of the map below, see our product page.
Copyright © Pacific Biodiversity Institute
PO Box 298, 517 Lufkin Lane
Winthrop, WA 98862 509-996-2490