History of the Northern Blues Restoration Partnership

This partnership was created out of the understanding that the challenges we face - wildfire, forest and watershed health, and rural prosperity - are too complex and interconnected to be tackled by any one group alone. Through collaboration, mutual trust, and a shared understanding of forest and watershed health, we can reduce wildfire risks, improve forest health and wildlife habitat, revitalize local communities, and restore a collective sense of hope, dignity, and belonging.

In response to the Timber Wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, individual leadership from federal, state, Tribal, and private lands came together to move people beyond past conflicts and focus on a shared agenda of forest restoration, stewardship, and rural community revitalization.

In 2012, Northeast Oregon County Commissioners worked with the forest supervisors of both the Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests to convene formal forest collaboratives for each National Forest. The unifying ecological setting and the overlap in membership and participation of the two collaboratives led to the merger of the two collaboratives into the Northern Blues Forest Collaborative in 2019.

In parallel to this, various partners came together to support private family forest management under the My Blue Mountains Woodland partnership. Local, state, and Tribal governments united to advance a community safety and landscape resilience effort under the Northern Blues Cohesive Wildfire Strategy. Together these collaboration efforts positioned our region and partners to submit the number one ranked Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) proposal nationwide and the only one to be awarded funding in 2020.

Since the beginning, our work has been driven by the need to restore landscapes across jurisdictions, strengthen rural communities, and build social and ecological resilience. As a partnership, we have outlined this vision for large landscape restoration across the Northern Blues within our Memorandum of Understanding.

Learn more about the work and progress towards our goals of healthy landscapes, vibrant communities, and ecological resilience, at the Partnership Dashboard below.

An “all hands, all lands” approach to forest, watershed, fire, and community resilience.

The Northern Blues Restoration Partnership Area encompasses 10.4 million acres across portions of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington.

Covering six counties in Oregon and five in Washington, the Northern Blues includes alpine mountain ranges, rolling uplands and range, deep canyonlands, open meadow, and both dry and moist forests. The project area is 37% (3.8 million acres) national forest lands and 59% (6.1 million acres) private and Tribal - of those acres 4.5 million are forested (43% of the landscape).

The project area overlaps the ceded territories of three federally recognized Tribes: The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), The Nez Perce Tribe, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. These Tribes actively protect and exercise rights reserved by Treaties with the United States Government, which guarantees rights to fish, hunt, and gather foods and medicines such as roots and berries throughout traditional use areas.  These tribes maintain their inherent sovereignty, of which self-government and co-management of natural resources are critical parts.

Collectively, there are approximately 230,000 people living and working within the designated area. Our rural communities rely on the natural resources in the area for social, economic and ecological benefits.

Check out the 2024 Annual Report summary to learn more about some of the impacts of the Northern Blues Partnership by clicking the button below.

OUR FOOTPRINT

PARTNERSHIP DOCUMENTATION

OUR PARTNERS

Working together across agencies, disciplines, and property lines is a vital part of getting work done on the ground. While the partners represented here are those invited or signed on to the Partnership’s Memorandum of Understanding, we work with many more organizations and individuals beyond this.

Click below to learn more about our partners:

Interested in joining the Partnership? Fill out the form below!

OUR STRUCTURE

The structure of the Northern Blues Restoration Partnership ensures that on-the-ground projects and relationships drive appropriate actions across the Northern Blues, while also tapping into a collective knowledge base that spans diverse organizational and boundary perspectives.

The Partnership is driven by project-based teams working towards implementation. That work is supported by purpose-based resources teams, comprised of subject-area stakeholders, to help support, inform, and tell the story of that work. Once a year, the Partnership’s Leadership Team comes together, including representatives from all MOU signees and other key stakeholders, to provide organizational updates and guidance on the upcoming year. The Operations Team spans all three of these groups, providing additional support and coordination to help get work done.

Twice a year, the Partnership comes together to dive deeper into relevant topics related to forest restoration. The Annual Meeting is a two-day event taking place in early spring where partners, stakeholders, and landowners come together around a focal topic, such as workforce development and monitoring and adaptive management. These meetings help generate ideas and actionable strategies to move the needle around that topic area. The Annual Field Tour brings the Partnership outdoors to connect the conversation to actual projects happening in the Partnership footprint.

Interested in signing our MOU?

We are always looking for new partners to collaborate with. We would love to hear about your work and what you see your role as in our Partnership.

Send us a message using this form and let us know why you are interested in joining the Northern Blues Restoration Partnership!