Green Seattle Partnership Models Regional Urban Natural Areas Restoration Efforts

The Green Seattle Partnership (GSP) was launched in 2005 to create a model for urban forest natural area restoration in the Puget Sound region of western Washington. To date, thirteen other municipalities and one county have adopted the Green City Partnership model to utilize a 20-year strategic planning process to prioritize and guide natural area restoration programing. Initial planning work includes taking stock of the community and ecological resources and defining costs. Not all prioritization and planning efforts live in the strategic plan. During the fourteen years since the launch of the GSP, annual planning efforts have been responsive to broader city and community priorities, as well as to current conditions captured in work records and monitoring data.