At neighborhood councils, town halls and county courthouse, choices about how our region grows are made everyday and the people that show up are shaping the future.  Cascade Land Conservancy, our community partners and residents like you have showed up and we are making a difference by voicing support for choices that make The Cascade Agenda a reality.  

 

Each of the accomplishments below represents progress toward our shared goals; conserving over one million acres of our most critical lands and making our communities great places to live, work and raise our families. 

 

The Cascade Agenda was created by our community and together, we are implementing its vision.

 

Innovative Conservation

With leadership from Cascade Land Conservancy, the State Legislature passed a groundbreaking bill that will create a regional market for transferring development rights from our working forests, farms and natural lands into our cities and towns, where population growth is better accommodated. 

We worked with five families from across the region to move development potential off their forestlands.  Their working forests are protected and they have been fairly compensated for the loss of future development potential on their lands.  Looking forward, the Conservancy now has the opportunity to work with nearby cities and towns to transfer these development rights into existing cities and towns and thereby create new housing and business opportunities.
 
Cascade Land Conservancy announced a coalition of conservation organizations, timber companies and business leaders who together are introducing national Community Forest Bonds legislation.  If passed, this new program will enable non-profit conservation organizations to use municipal bonds to purchase working forestlands for both long-term conservation and economically sustainable timber management.
 
More than 2,100 acres of commercial forestland in the Hood Canal Watershed will be permanently protected from residential development through the cooperation of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Pope Resources and the Cascade Land Conservancy.

 

Gene Duvernoy, Nicole Hill, Dan O'Neal, Norm Dicks and Patti Case at a celebration event for the Hood Canal project 

Vibrant, Livable Communities

The Cities of Burien, Tukwila, Lynnwood and Sammamish became Cascade Agenda Cities.  Now, 14 cities across the region are advancing the Cascade Agenda by working to align their transit, housing, land use and parks and open space programs with the principles of the Cascade Agenda. 

The City of Tacoma’s Mixed Use Center development regulations update includes significant new efforts to advance in the Cascade Agenda.  The update outlines better building standards that support healthy, walkable communities as well as supports the ongoing effort to develop a local program to transfer development rights from nearby farms and forests into the city.

Cascade Land Conservancy participated in a new collaboration between Bellevue and King County to move development rights from the Raging River and White River watersheds in rural King County into Bellevue’s Bel-Red redevelopment corridor.  Allowing development rights to transfer into our region’s vibrant cities brings full circle the connection between encouraging growth in our urban areas and while protecting our natural resource areas.

---