Wild Sky is Growing

According to Terry Richard's blog over at the Oregonian, the Forest Service has made two purchases that increase wilderness and trail acres here in Washington. In the upper Wallace River drainage, the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie will add 149 acres to the Wild Sky, in parcels upstream [Editor's note: corrected from "downstream" 1/21/09] from Wallace Falls State Park. The land was purchased from the Cascade Land Conservancy, which had previously bought the land from a private owner.

The other purchase involves 1,082 acres near the Pacific Crest Trail in the checkerboard private lands around I-90 near Snoqualmie Pass. The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest bought this land from the Trust for Public Land

“The Forest Service has been working with Cascade Land Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land over six years to obtain funding for these projects,” said Forest Service realty specialist Scott Lynn in a press release.

These are great developments--both for the preservation of recreation lands, but also for wildlife and habitat protection in the Cascades.