As Eastern Washington Burns, a Long-Term Resilience Strategy Is More Important Than Ever

By Dr. Trina Bayard

Director of Bird Conservation, Audubon Washington

Published August 27, 2026

This article is from Audubon Washington . Find Audubon near you here.

With smoke in the air and wildfires once again making headlines across the state, many communities are focused on the immediate challenges of fire response and public safety. Yet these events also highlight an equally important question: What happens after the flames are extinguished?

For Audubon and our partners, that question has shaped years of work to build a more resilient future for Washington's shrub-steppe ecosystem, one of the state's most threatened and ecologically important landscapes.

A Turning Point in 2020

The Labor Day Fires of 2020 marked a watershed moment. In just 24 hours, fires swept across approximately 600,000 acres of Columbia Plateau shrub-steppe habitat, destroying critical breeding and nesting areas for sage-grouse and many other bird and wildlife species. The fires also devastated agricultural lands and rural communities, exposing a lack of coordinated capacity for rapid landscape recovery and long-term resilience planning.

As scientists and land managers assessed the damage, it became clear that increasingly frequent and severe wildfires were outpacing the ecosystem's ability to recover. A new approach was urgently needed.

Building a Collaborative Response

In the months following the fires, Audubon worked alongside conservation organizations, state agencies, legislators, and local partners to advocate for meaningful investments in recovery and preparedness. Together, we helped advance support for a Shrub-steppe Fire Recovery and Preparedness Proviso, mobilizing more than 700 individuals and 50 organizations in support of action.

Those efforts helped secure millions of dollars in state funding for recovery, restoration, and wildlife-friendly infrastructure improvements. More importantly, they laid the foundation for a coordinated, long-term strategy that would become the Washington Shrubsteppe Restoration and Resilience Initiative (WSRRI).

From Recovery to Resilience

Led by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Department of Natural Resources, and Washington State Conservation Commission, WSRRI represents a shift from reactive recovery to proactive resilience.

The initiative's 30-year strategy recognizes that fire will remain part of the landscape. Rather than focusing solely on post-fire restoration, it seeks to strengthen the health and resilience of shrub-steppe ecosystems before catastrophic fires occur.

The strategy centers on five interconnected priorities:

Community engagement and partnership
Habitat protection
Habitat restoration
Species management
Fire management

Together, these priorities support a landscape-scale vision captured in the principle: "Defend the Core, Grow the Core, Connect the Core." By protecting the highest quality remaining habitat, restoring degraded areas, and improving connectivity across the landscape, partners can help ensure that wildlife populations are more resilient to future disturbances.

Audubon's Ongoing Role

Audubon has supported WSRRI through an advisory capacity since 2021, contributing bird conservation expertise and helping shape implementation of the initiative's long-term strategy. Today, our work includes advocating for sustained conservation funding, identifying opportunities for collaborative restoration projects, expanding engagement with private landowners, and supporting innovative approaches that benefit both wildlife and working lands.

One example is Audubon Conservation Ranching, which works with ranchers to implement grazing practices that improve habitat for birds while supporting thriving rural communities. In the west, this can include technical assistance to reduce wildfire risk and address fuels management and fire preparedness.

These kinds of partnerships demonstrate that conservation, wildfire resilience, and economic sustainability can go hand in hand.

Why This Matters Right Now

The wildfires burning across Eastern Washington today are a reminder that the challenges facing shrub-steppe ecosystems are not hypothetical or decades away. They are happening now.

Every acre of intact shrub-steppe that remains protected, every restoration project that is completed, and every partnership that strengthens community preparedness helps reduce future risk. You can play a part in helping protect this vital landscape by joining our action network. We’ll let you know when the time is right to urge Washington state legislators to fully fund WSRRI in the next biennial budget. Sustained funding is what will keep this landscape resilient for years to come.