Cleaning up Washington’s Wild Sky Wilderness

September 4, 2024-

After the Trust acquires a private property in or around wilderness, we work with our agency partners to assess whether any restoration work is needed prior to transferring it to public ownership. Our goal is to restore the property to its wilderness character, improve habitat, and mitigate any public safety concerns on the property. What exactly that restoration looks like is different for each property, and has ranged from removing cabins, vehicles, and commercial mining equipment, to closing historic mine adits, and packing out trash.

A few weeks ago Trust President Brad Borst and Senior Lands Specialist Kelly Conde hiked into several properties owned by the Trust in Washington’s Wild Sky Wilderness with our USFS partners. Thanks to its rugged landscape and lush temperate rainforest, our Wild Sky Wilderness projects are notoriously difficult to access. Brad, Kelly, and two USFS employees hiked 10 miles through this terrain, crossing logs over steep ravines, to visit our Greater New York and Rambler Lode properties. There, they were able to clean up and pack out several tables, metal sheeting, a pully system from a mine opening, rope, webbing, and some other assorted trash.

While not the most complex restoration project we’ve completed, it signals we are getting close to being able to complete the transfer of the 15 properties we currently own in the Wild Sky Wilderness to public ownership later this year. About 1/4 of Washington’s remaining wilderness inholdings are in the Wild Sky Wilderness, and another 1/2 are in the adjacent Henry M Jackson Wilderness. This transfer is the exciting culmination of several years of work, and will have a real impact in unifying this wilderness landscape which is highly fragmented by many private inholdings.