Washington Connected Landscapes Project: Cascades to Coast Analysis

Formed in 2007, the Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group (WWHCWG) is an open collaborative science-based effort to produce tools and analyses that identify opportunities and priorities to provide habitat connectivity in Washington and surrounding habitats (https://waconnected.org). The WWHCWG began with a Statewide Habitat Connectivity Analysis, which highlighted several regions of the state that would benefit from finer-scale analyses. The group has since conducted analyses across many of those regions. One of the remaining regions was Washington’s Cascades to Coast region. The goal of this project was to identify habitat corridors and wildlife crossing priorities using 5 focal species that are representative of the region’s varied ecosystems. Those species are the American beaver (Castor canadensis), cougar (Puma concolor), fisher (Pekania pennanti), mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa), and western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus). The connectedness of protected areas was also modeled to evaluate the integrity of the landscape.