FIELD NOTES: February 2026

Executive Director’s Note:

Despite overwhelming evidence and public opinion, the federal government is choosing to bury its head in the sand at a time when confronting and adapting to the realities of climate change is more important than ever.

Earlier this month, the administration repealed the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which classified climate change-causing greenhouse gases as pollutants, granting the EPA authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act. Repealing the finding fundamentally undermines the legal basis enabling the federal government to make rules and regulations to address climate change.

In addition to stripping the EPA of the ability to regulate CO2  and other greenhouse gases, the decision will likely lead to additional bad outcomes and may signal that other rollbacks are on the horizon, like a move away from climate-focused and science-based land management plans and undoing any recent progress that was made towards including consideration for carbon sequestration in timber sale negotiations.

The decision to deregulate pollutants defies the threat and the reality of climate change and its impacts. The scientific consensus is even clearer in 2026 than it was in 2009 when the Endangerment Finding was put in place: greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are a serious threat to the health and well-being of all Americans.

In the Cascades, our snowpacks are at record lows. Droughts, mega fires, and atmospheric rivers have scarred our landscapes and harmed communities. In 2024 alone, weather and climate-change-related disasters cost the United States $27 billion. As more greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, the impacts and costs of climate change will continue to rise.

 

 

As the federal government shirks its responsibility to address climate change, Cascade Forest Conservancy continues to step up. Protected, healthy, and biodiverse forests in the Pacific Northwest slow climate change and mitigate its impacts. CFCs work to safeguard forests in our region—especially old-growth and mature stands that capture and store vast amounts of carbon—reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, slowing the acceleration of climate change.

Additionally, our work to restore forest and aquatic habitats is easing climate change impacts by making ecosystems and communities in the southern Washington Cascades more resilient. Restoring salmon habitats, supporting beaver recovery, combating the spread of invasive species, restoring fire-impacted forests, and safeguarding old-growth Douglas firs from insect infestations are all making local ecosystems and the life they support healthier and better able to adapt to the challenges they are facing.

We cannot, nor will we, wait for those in power to accept their responsibility to address climate change. With you, our inspiring community of supporters, friends, partners, and volunteers, we will keep holding decision-makers accountable and protecting our forests.

 

 

 

    • Volunteer with CFC: Come make a difference out in the field! Many of our volunteer opportunities fill up fast. Be the first to know about new volunteer opportunities by adding your name and email to our volunteer update list.

 

    • Raise your voice: Your voice makes a difference when you use our talking points to submit comments, contact decision makers, or sign support letters. Stay tuned for action alerts, like the one below—and join us in speaking out for conservation and public lands.

 

    • Help us spread the word about the importance of roadless areas. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest is home to a number of Inventoried Roadless Areas, including the Dark Divide, Siouxon, and Silver Star Roadless Areas. Today, the rule that protects these strongholds of wildlife habitat and backcountry is under threat. We’re looking for spokespeople to help us in our outreach. Contact our Communications Manager, Bryn (bryn@cascadeforest.org) if you’d be willing to talk to us about your experiences in Inventoried Roadless Areas.

 

  • Support our work: Cascade Forest Conservancy is strong because of support from people like you. To help us prepare for the work ahead in 2026, make a donation of $6, $20, or $26 today.

 

NEWS & UPDATES:

 

The Department of Agriculture is again trying to curtail the public’s ability to meaningfully participate in decisions impacting federal lands..

Proposed changes would significantly limit the amount of time we have to comment on plans and decisions for timber sales and other land management projects managed by the US Forest Service and limit the amount and type of information we can include in public processes. 

Many of the Environmental Assessments, Environmental Impact Statements, and Decisions we comment on are complex in nature. Ground truthing and completing a detailed review of the ecological, legal, and practical impacts of land management plans (sometimes at a stand-by-stand level of detail) requires significant time and resources.

Accountability, local knowledge, careful review, and public feedback help the agency make better decisions. These changes are unacceptable and will lead to worse decision-making.

Please join us in fighting these changes by submitting a comment by March 9th. 

 

TAKE ACTION:

Write comments using CFC’s talking points using the link below, or comment directly on the federal registrar’s notice here.   

 Comment using CFC’s Talking Points

 

 

 

Field Season is Underway!

We kicked off the 2026 volunteer season with a restoration planting trip. Volunteers planted 200 trees at two sites along Salmon Creek, a tributary of the Cowlitz River. The western redcedar, Douglas fir, and big leaf maple they planted along the stream bank will increase habitat diversity and provide shade, which will help cool water temperatures. Since November, volunteers and Northwest Youth Corps members have planted over 1,000 trees at these sites!

 

 

CFC Staff Traveled to Olympia 

Our Policy Manager and Science and Stewardship Manager went to Olympia show support for Alexa Whipple and Dr. Jonah Piovia Scott, who spoke about the benefits of beavers and their intersection with humans at a Work Session during the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Jan 29th.

While there, they met with Senator Annette Cleveland’s team and Representative Sharon Wylie, both of whom are in the 49th District. They spoke about:

    • Funding the Department of Natural Resources’ Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration, and Community Resilience Account (HB 1168), which plays a critical role in preparing communities for wildfire and broader climate impacts.

 

    • Funding the Trust Land Transfer (TLT) program to support additional projects from last session’s approved list. The TLT program helps DNR to transfer low-revenue lands to other ownership types, like habitat conservation, and replace them with new income-producing lands, a real win-win!

 

    • The importance of beavers and the role they play in supporting the health and function of watersheds, particularly for salmon recovery and climate resilience. We let them know about the Washington Beaver Working Group and how we are always working to make beaver management more effective and streamlined across the state, while working to protect beavers and their habitats. We also touched on the benefits of beavers in wildfire-prone areas.

 

 

Save the Date: Washougal Beaver Bash is Coming April 18!

Get ready to celebrate International Beaver Day in Washougal!

The Washougal Beaver Bash will be a free, family-friendly event featuring art projects, live music, and exhibitor booths with beaver experts ready to share knowledge about our favorite ecosystem engineers!

PROJECT UPDATE: INVASIVE SURVEYS IN TIMBER UNITS

Parts of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and other national forests possess something increasingly rare in the western United States: forests and river corridors largely free of invasive plants. These places are important refuges for native plant communities, including many rare and threatened species. 

This is not something we should take for granted. As collaborators in the stewardship of this area, we feel a great sense of responsibility in doing what we can to help keep it this way. 

More and more, we are seeing formerly healthy native plant communities in the national forest succumb to aggressive invasive species like scotch broom, herb Robert, bull thistle, and others. Cascade Forest Conservancy, often with the help of our science and stewardship volunteers, have worked throughout the years to remove invasive species from sensitive habitats and conduct field mapping to record new outbreaks of invasive plants to share with partners and work collaboratively to keep further expansion at bay.

 

 

These efforts are important, but the best way to protect our local native ecosystems is to prevent outbreaks of invasive plant species before they happen.

Roads are known pathways for these introductions, but an under-discussed and increasingly impactful vector for invasive species are the logging machines that wind their way into previously intact forest stands. Too often, this results in outbreaks of invasive plant infestations that will be in these areas for perpetuity.

Cascade Forest Conservancy is working to address this threat on multiple fronts. 

In our role as watchdogs, we study and weigh in on the Forest Service’s plans for all timber sales and other management actions. We find that the introduction of invasive plants is often mentioned only in passing in Forest Service planning documents. While there are mitigation measures written into timber planning documents, such as stated requirements for equipment to be cleaned and checked for weed seeds, these protocols are insufficient to combat the scale of the problem or the seriousness of the threat to rare strongholds of local biodiversity.

Today, due to increased timber targets forced on land managers and a renewed rush to access new forest stands for logging, the integrity of native plant communities are at risk.

 

 

We continue to highlight these risks in formal comments on timber sales and in our conversations with Forest Service planners. More recently, we’ve launched an additional new effort to monitor recently logged forests for early signs of invasive plant establishment.

By detecting and treating infestations early, we aim to reduce long-term impacts and help protect these vulnerable ecosystems. We can sometimes treat these areas on the spot through hand-pulling; other times we share our findings with the Forest Service and the county weed treatment teams for more comprehensive treatment and, hopefully, continual monitoring. While this effort won’t stop all new infestations, it’s a meaningful step we can take, and one that we’re pursuing through volunteer trips that bring community members directly into these forests to assist with invasive plant surveys and control.

We continue to highlight these risks in formal comments on timber sales and in our conversations with Forest Service planners. More recently, we’ve launched an additional new effort to monitor recently logged forests for early signs of invasive plant establishment.

By detecting and treating infestations early, we aim to reduce long-term impacts and help protect these vulnerable ecosystems. We can sometimes treat these areas on the spot through hand-pulling; other times we share our findings with the Forest Service and the county weed treatment teams for more comprehensive treatment and, hopefully, continual monitoring. While this effort won’t stop all new infestations, it’s a meaningful step we can take, and one that we’re pursuing through volunteer trips that bring community members directly into these forests to assist with invasive plant surveys and control.

Timber harvest and wildfires

Continue reading

PROJECT UPDATE: BEAVER REINTRODUCTIONS ARE IN FULL SWING

CFC’s beaver reintroduction program has been operating since 2019 and to date has released 34 individuals into carefully studied and selected locations where the animals have the best possible chance to thrive. We, along with an ever-growing number of Tribes, agencies, and organizations, are using beaver reintroductions as a way to improve degraded habitats and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Watersheds are healthier and more resilient when beavers are present. Their dams slow waterways and create deep pools, expand and improve aquatic habitats, foster drought and flood resilience, and slow or even disrupt the spread of wildfires.

 

 

At the end of the third field season in my time working as Cascade Forest Conservancy’s (CFC) Communications Manager, I had an opportunity to participate in and document the final leg of a beaver’s relocation into the forest–something that has been high on my “CFC bucket list” since I joined the team. This was my first chance to meet the iconic, indomitable, habitat-engineering North American beaver (Castor canadensis) up close.

I was also getting time to chat with CFC’s Science & Stewardship Manager/beaver wrangler extraordinaire, Amanda Keasberry, on our drive north to the release site as our passenger, a 55-pound male beaver, napped on a bed of straw in a large animal carrier in the back of the Subaru. Amanda trapped him the day before, and he had spent the night at the Vancouver Trout Hatchery, where animals are safely housed and cared for between capture and release. We are grateful to have access to these facilities thanks to new partnerships with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and our friends at Columbia Springs, a local nonprofit working to inspire stewardship through education experiences designed to foster greater awareness of the natural world.

I found it difficult to fully comprehend how it was that animals like the one snoring softly behind me had once been the driver of continent-wide change. Not so long ago, Europe’s obsession with fashionable pelts motivated and financed westward colonization and resulted in the near-eradication of beavers from many parts of North America. The loss of this once-abundant keystone species profoundly altered the character, course, and quality of unfathomably vast areas of aquatic and riparian habitat across the continent. The systematic extermination of beavers was an ecological disaster on par with the destruction of the buffalo herds of the Great Plains.

 

 

As we drove, our conversations returned to CFC’s beaver program. Now a licensed trapper equipped with advice from a few generous mentors, Amanda had been busy, to say the least. Our passenger (the mate to a beaver caught earlier in the week) was the sixth animal Amanda had successfully trapped in only ten days. These two beavers, she explained, were being moved at the request of a local landowner. It seemed that after several years of peaceful co-existence, the situation with these beavers had become dangerous. The landowner had noticed that the animals had been chewing large trees on a slope directly above their home. Just days before traps were set, the beavers felled a tree onto the homeowner’s deck. “A lone beaver can take down a large tree in a single night,” Amanda explained.

Nearly all of the beavers CFC relocates come from similar situations. Although current population numbers are still well below their estimated abundance prior to European colonization, the species has managed a remarkable recovery. Unfortunately, they have been slow to return to some areas high in watersheds where their dam-building will have much-needed positive impacts. The species is, however, becoming widespread in some places where their tendency to down trees, flood fields or roads, or block culverts, inevitably leads to conflict with human neighbors. Even ardent lovers of wildlife sometimes feel forced to resort to lethal removal. Thankfully, Amanda’s trapping and relocation efforts provide an alternative. In many instances, beaver relocations represent the best outcome for all involved.

 

 

As we neared our destination and gained elevation, the rain picked up and the temperature dropped. We stopped along an unpaved forest road south of Mount St. Helens. After zipping up our coats, pulling up our hoods, and putting on gloves and waders, we carried our cargo (who was still somehow napping) into the brush before carefully lowering the carrier to the ground a few feet back from the bank of the waterway.

 

 

I could tell from the animal carrier-sized depression in the grass and the bits of straw on the ground that this was exactly the same site where this individual’s mate had been released just days before. Amanda noted that the willow trimmings she’d left on the bank had been eaten. This was a good sign, she said. She felt reasonably optimistic that our male’s mate was still nearby.

I expected our beaver would be eager to get away from us, his strange captors, as soon as the door to the carrier opened. I walked off a few yards to set up a camera and tripod and prepared to capture what I thought would be a quick burst of action. I hit record and gave Amanda a thumbs up. The door swung open, but to my surprise, nothing happened. This male was in no hurry to leave. It seemed he’d prefer to continue contentedly napping on his warm bed of straw.

Amanda coaxed him out by gently lifting the back of the carrier up a few inches. Still, even on the bank, the beaver was in no rush to go anywhere. But a minute later, his nose began to twitch–he seemed to smell something familiar. He zeroed in on remnants of the bedding left behind from the earlier release of his mate and started to perk up.

 

 

At last, the beaver was on his way. He lumbered a few feet down the bank before slipping silently into the dark, tannin-stained waters. Watching him go, I had thought he was slow and awkward on land. Once in the water, however, he moved gracefully and with purpose.

He swam for a short distance with his head and back above the surface, then arched his back and slipped out of sight beneath the water–becoming in that instant as much a part of this landscape as the grasses, willows, and western redcedars around us. I was moved to see him set off into this wild, remote, and unnamed waterway deep in the forest, and felt hopeful in the understanding that if all goes well, the presence of this beaver and his mate will improve this area and protect it from the worst impacts of climate change for years to come.