Advance Policy
Work For You
Since 1989, Forterra has offered a full spectrum of professional services to not-for-profit groups, businesses and government clients across the region. Our professional staff is committed to providing clients quality work from project conception to completion.
Employing Forterra's services will help you accomplish your objectives and align your efforts with the largest conservation and community building efforts of our time, The Cascade and Olympic Agendas.
Property Acquisition
Forterra works with landowners, local governments and developers to conserve wild and working lands.
Build Community
Cascade Agenda Cities
The Cascade Agenda is guided by the principle that great cities help preserve great natural lands.
Conservation Initiatives
Forterra is working to conserve 1 million acres of land across Washington
Forterra is a leader in land conservation. We employ both traditional and cutting edge tools to help conserve land through out the Central Cascades and across the Olympic Peninsula. Learn more about our current conservation iniatives by clicking the links below.
Kitsap Forest and Bay Project
Forterra is working to conserve almost 7,000 acres of land in North Kitsap County.
Green Cities
Forterra’s Green Cities Program implements public-private partnerships to restore and maintain urban forests, natural areas, and greenspaces. Explore our work below and learn how to get involved in your community.
Conserve Land
In over twenty years, we’ve completed 163 projects conserving over 173,000 acres of important urban green space, working lands, and rivers, streams and forests throughout the region.
We employ traditional conservation tools such as land purchases, donations, conservation easements and ownership agreements. We’re also implementing innovative conservation tools like Transfer of Development rights and the Landscape Conservation and Landscape Infrastructure Program (LCLIP), a tool Forterra led through the 2011 legislative session.
Get Involved
The power to shape the future comes from you.
Forterra relies on the support of people like you to accomplish its goals of creating a healthy, sustainable, economically and environmentally sound region. There are many opportunities to get involved. You can make a donation, volunteer your time at an event, advocate for important issues on behalf of Forterra and more!
What We Do
Forterra is advancing an innovative new approach to conservation and community building.
Forterra is advancing an innovative new approach to conservation that encourages collaboration across all sectors and balances environmental, social and economic needs. We emphasize the link between vibrant cities and healthy rural lands and use creative new ways to protect land on a scale never seen before. Our efforts include conserving land, building better communities, advancing new policies providing a spectrum of professional services.
Who We Are
Forterra is the largest conservation and community building organization in the Northwest.
Forterra's mission is to act with immediacy to protect, enhance and steward our region's most precious resources—its communities and its landscapes. Filling a unique niche as the largest conservation and community building organization in Washington State, we are working to build the foundations for our sustainable environmental and economic futures in the face of a rapidly growing population. For over 20 years, Forterra has led efforts to conserve more than 173,000 acres of forests, farms, shorelines, parks and natural areas and restore critical landscapes.
Guided by a belief that broad inclusion garners broader success, Forterra is advancing an innovative new approach to conservation that encourages collaboration across all sectors and balances environmental, social and economic needs. We emphasize the link between vibrant cities and healthy rural lands and use creative new ways to protect land on a scale never seen before.
Where We Work
Forterra works to build community and conserve land across Washington
Forterra's work stretches from the farmland and river canyons of Yakima all the way to the estuaries and forests of Washington’s coastline. We are committed to smart urban policy and urban forest restoration in the Puget Sound region’s many wonderful cities. We are working with communities across the Olympic Peninsula to create a sustainable plan for the next 100 years. The scope of our work has expanded dramatically over the past several decades, the circle in which we map “our region” continues to grow, but whether we’re conserving land in Mt. Vernon or building community gardens in Tacoma, Forterra’s mission to further economic and environmental sustainablity remains right at the heart of everywhere we work.
Planning and Policy Development
Forterra helps you create your great community
Creating Great Communities
Forterra partners with cities and their citizens to create communities that provide affordable, attractive, prosperous and healthy places to live, work and raise families. By working to ensure that the majority of new residents live in walkable neighborhoods near transportation choices, jobs and shopping, future growth will not compromise the natural areas, workings farms and forests that make this region special.
What we do:
Forterra focuses on three key actions to drive local innovation in land use policy. We educate city leaders and citizens, research and develop smart growth policies and advance catalytic and pioneering projects.
1. Build Public Support: Forterra educates city leaders and residents on the benefits of well-planned growth and engages local citizens in advocating for quality growth in their communities
2. Advance Policy Implementation: Forterra works closely with cities to research, write and adopt strong plans, policies and ordinances that create affordable, healthy, economically vibrant communities
3. Initiate Catalytic Projects: Forterra and its partners work to advance transformational projects that demonstrate the benefits of smart growth and to initiate private market response
Areas of focus:
- Transit Oriented Development
- Innovative Housing
- Complete Streets and active transportation
- Community gardens and urban agriculture
- Citizen engagement in the planning process
- Healthy Communities
Contact us for more information about our urban livability services:
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Carbon Mitigation
A Global Concern
Accelerating climate change and its impact on both the environment and our quality of life have become a part of our everyday concerns. Globally, scientists predict an increase in extreme storms, extinction of animals, melting of our polar icecaps and severe droughts and floods. Locally, it threatens our water supply, the health and productivity of our forests, and the safety and livability of our communities.
A Local Solution
Forterra is addressing this problem by partnering with individuals and local businesses to mitigate their carbon footprint through urban forest restoration. Forterra’s Green City Partnerships are community-based stewardship projects that restore urban forests by removing invasive plants, replanting native shrubs and trees, and monitoring the areas.
A Smart Approach
Forterra is a national leader in urban forest restoration. Recognizing that successful urban reforestation requires long term maintenance and monitoring, we’ve developed 20-year strategic plans for individual cities. The current state of city forests is accessed and categorizes acres into nine different value and threat levels. These levels are placed into a “tree-iage” system where high value and low threat receives priority attention, while low value and high threat receives the least priority.
A Worthy Investment
Forterra’s Carbon Mitigation Program connects individuals and local businesses to our Green Cities Programs and allows them to invest in urban forest restoration in five cities across the region. The cost to mitigate your carbon is comprised of the base field costs—such as invasive removal, site preparation, plant and planting materials, irrigation, and other maintenance necessary to ensure plant establishment and survival.
Contact us for more information on Carbon Mitigation:
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Geospatial Technology
Forterra offers sophisticated GIS expertise
Forterra provides sophisticated tools for collecting, creating, managing and communicating geographic information. The visual presentation of data is helpful in finding answers to complex questions about the landscape. Our areas of expertise include spatial modeling and analysis to support critical decision-making; professional maps and compelling 3D visualizations that communicate geography; and data customization to document physical features, goals, priorities and achievements.
For more information, please contact us:
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Ecological Restoration and Stewardship
Hire Forterra to Steward and Restore your land
Forterra works with private landowners, local governments and non-profits to help them become more effective managers and stewards of their natural areas. Specific services include partnering with municipalities to develop volunteer-based stewardship programs for forested parklands and other green infrastructure; creating and implementing restoration and management plans; developing and delivering training programs, best management practices and forest and natural area stewardship guides and outreach publications; and convening a wide variety of stakeholders to help solve complex landscape problems.
Ecological Restoration
Forterra partners with multiple stakeholders to identify ecological restoration priorities, create restoration plans and designs, coordinate project planning and implementation, manage project contractors and oversee project monitoring to help ensure restoration results are maintained over time.
For more information, please contact us:
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Transfer Of Development Rights
Forterra uses innovative tools like TDR
Forterra partners with landowners, state and local governments, and other relevant stakeholders to develop Transfer of Development Right (TDR) programs.TDR is an incentive-based real estate tool that provides landowners new options for realizing the development potential of farmland, forests, and private natural areas.
Through voluntary transactions, development rights are are sold and transferred from lands with important resource or conservation value(sending sites) to areas better suited for growth and development (receiving sites). Landowners in sending areas receive the development value of their property, retaining ownership and all other property rights, while developers in receiving areas pay for the right to a bonus in the receiving area, such as additional height or density than would not otherwise be allowed. When development rights are sold from a parcel, a conservation easement is placed on the sending site to reflect the transfer from the property.
Please contact us for more information:
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Property Acquisition
Forterra can help you conserve your land
Forterra works with landowners, local governments and developers to systematically identify and conserve priority natural areas, working farms and forests. We use traditional approaches such as land purchases, conservation easements and donations of land, as well as innovative tools such as mitigation banking, transfer of development rights and conservation development.
Please contact one of our County offices to see how we can help:
King County (Main Forterra Office)
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Kittitas County
(509) 962-1654
info@forterra.org
Pierce County
(253) 274-4955
info@forterra.org
Snohomish County
(206) 292-5907
info@forterra.org
Mapping Services
About Green Cities
Protect our important legacy of beautiful parks and vibrant communities
The Cascade Land Conservancy’s Green City Partnerships program works to reverse this trend while helping to protect our important legacy of beautiful parks and vibrant communities. The Green City Partnership program has already seen success in several Washington communities and it is expected to grow each year.
Community Planning and Policy Development
Forterra partners with cities and their citizens to create communities that provide affordable, attractive, prosperous and healthy places to live, work and raise families. By working to ensure that the majority of new residents live in walkable neighborhoods near transportation choices, jobs and shopping, future growth will not compromise the natural areas, workings farms and forests that make this region special.
What we do:
Forterra focuses on three key actions to drive local innovation in land use policy. We educate city leaders and citizens, research and develop smart growth policies and advance catalytic and pioneering projects.
1. Build Public Support: Forterra educates city leaders and residents on the benefits of well-planned growth and engages local citizens in advocating for quality growth in their communities
2. Advance Policy Implementation: Forterra works closely with cities to research, write and adopt strong plans, policies and ordinances that create affordable, healthy, walkable, and economically vibrant communities
3. Initiate Catalytic Projects: Forterra and its partners work to advance transformational projects that demonstrate the benefits of smart growth and to initiate private market response
Areas of focus:
• Transit Oriented Development
• Innovative Housing
• Complete Streets and active transportation
• Community gardens and urban agriculture
• Citizen engagement in the planning process
• Healthy Communities
For more information about our urban livability services, please contact Alison Van Gorp, Urban Policy Director, at 206 905 6892 or at alisonv@www.forterra.org
GIS
Geospacial Technology and Expertise
Forterra provides sophisticated tools and techniques for collecting, creating, managing and communicating geographic information and for finding answers to complex questions about the landscape. Our areas of expertise include spatial modeling and analysis to support critical decision-making; professional maps and compelling 3D visualizations that communicate geography; and data customization to document physical features, goals, priorities and achievements.
Contact Christopher Walter, Forterra Geospatial Division Director, cwalter@forterra.org
Carbon Mitigation
A Global Concern
Accelerating climate change and its impact on both the environment and our quality of life have become a part of our everyday concerns. Globally, scientists predict an increase in extreme storms, extinction of animals, melting of our polar icecaps and severe droughts and floods. Locally, it threatens our water supply, the health and productivity of our forests, and the safety and livability of our communities.
A Local Solution
Forterra is addressing this problem by partnering with individuals and local businesses to mitigate their carbon footprint through urban forest restoration. Forterra’s Green City Partnerships are community-based stewardship projects that restore urban forests by removing invasive plants, replanting native shrubs and trees, and monitoring the areas.
A Smart Approach
Forterra is a national leader in urban forest restoration. Recognizing that successful urban reforestation requires long term maintenance and monitoring, we’ve developed 20-year strategic plans for individual cities. The current state of city forests is accessed and categorizes acres into nine different value and threat levels. These levels are placed into a “tree-iage” system where high value and low threat receives priority attention, while low value and high threat receives the least priority.
A Worthy Investment
Forterra’s Carbon Mitigation Program connects individuals and local businesses to our Green Cities Programs and allows them to invest in urban forest restoration in five cities across the region. The cost to mitigate your carbon is comprised of the base field costs—such as invasive removal, site preparation, plant and planting materials, irrigation, and other maintenance necessary to ensure plant establishment and survival.
To calculate your carbon footprint, we recommend using the Seattle Climate Now calculators on the Seattle Climate Partnership website.
For more information, please contact Ara Erickson at arae@forterra.org or 206 905 6923
Restoration
Let Us Help You Restore Your Conserved Land
Stewardship and Restoration
Forterra works with private landowners, local governments and non-profits to help them become more effective managers and stewards of their natural areas. Specific services include partnering with municipalities to develop volunteer-based stewardship programs for forested parklands and other green infrastructure; creating and implementing restoration and management plans; developing and delivering training programs, best management practices and forest and natural area stewardship guides and outreach publications; and convening a wide variety of stakeholders to help solve complex landscape problems.
Ecological Restoration
Forterra partners with multiple stakeholders to identify ecological restoration priorities, create restoration plans and designs, coordinate project planning and implementation, manage project contractors and oversee project monitoring to help ensure restoration results are maintained over time.
For more information, please contact us at info@forterra.org or 206 292 5907
Property Aquisition
Forterra works with landowners, local governments and developers to systematically identify and conserve priority natural areas, working farms and forests. We use traditional approaches such as land purchases, conservation easements and donations of land, as well as innovative tools such as mitigation banking, transfer of development rights, and conservation development.
Please contact your County's Conservation Director to see how we can be of assistance.
Contact us for more information:
206-292-5907
info@forterra.org
Conservation Markets
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