Orchard Loner

The Orchard-Loner project area is located in the eastern foothills of the Olympic Mountains, in the Lower North Fork and Lower South Fork Skokomish River watersheds.  The Collaborative assisted the Olympic National Forest on this stewardship sale of 175 acres of previously harvested plantation stands for restoration thinning. 

The Orchard-Loner project area has not been harvested as of August 2024. The treatment prescribed for the Orchard-Loner project area is a combination of variable density thinning and gap cuts to achieve spatial patterns, density, and species compositions that will set the Orchard-Loner units on a trajectory towards old-growth structures and functions.

The Collaborative worked with the Skokomish Tribe and the Mason County Conservation District to adjust the project so that a large aquatic restoration project could move forward.