Several years ago, an effort was begun to pursue the possibility of purchasing various parcels of land that Weyerhaeuser owned between Lake Wenatchee and Blewett Pass. A coalition of interest groups, including Chelan-Douglas Land Trust (CDLT), Nature Conservancy, Chelan County, and The Trust for Public Land (TPL), subsequently established the Upper Wenatchee Community Lands Plan (UWCLP), a process to assess these lands for possible purchase to bring them into public ownership for a variety of activities including recreation, fish and wildlife, birding, etc. Combined, the parcels amounted to approximately 30,000 acres.
In November 2015, North Central Washington Audubon Society (NCWAS) established a task force to prioritize parcels from the perspective of landscape connectivity and native biodiversity. We subsequently identified several high-priority ones and in June 2016 submitted our recommendations to Chelan Douglas Land Trust for inclusion in the overall process (click here to view the document).
In 2018 an agreement was reached with Weyerhaeuser for the purchase of 3,714 acres adjacent to Lake Wenatchee State Park (click here to view map). This permanently protects several parcels along Nason and Kahler Creeks that we recommended as priorities for acquisition.
As important as the Nason Ridge purchases are, this still left the vast majority of the lands we prioritized for purchase unprotected. Since then, the remaining parcels have changed hands twice, and are now owned by Chinook Forest Partners (CFP).
In 2020, Trust for Public Lands took the languishing UWCLP under its wing and has since worked to finish the job. In early March 2022, TPL signed an agreement with CFP for a 7-year option to purchase approximately 35,000 acres, including all remaining UWCLP parcels and several others that were not part of the original group. So, what was the UWLCP has been expanded and is now TPL’s Upper Wenatchee Watershed Project (UWWP).
For project management purposes, the parcels have been divided into 6 groups or phases (click here to view map). Each phase has a deadline by which funding must be secured. If funding falls short, the number of parcels purchased will be reduced accordingly. So, this is a complicated stepwise process. The project will be successful to the extent that the needed funding can be raised by phase deadlines.
Phases 1 and 2, covering 11,520 acres in upper Blewett were completed and transferred to the Forest Service in the fall of 2025. NCWAS submitted letters supporting funding for each – To read them, click here for phase 1 and here for phase 2.
As of August 2026, fiscal year 2026 LWCF funding of $22,000,000 for phases 3, 4, and part of 5, covering approximately 10,000 acres, is currently pending in Congress. We’ll update this space as developments occur.