Latest News: 
Commerce finalizes Critical Areas Handbook Update

Commerce has completed updating the original 2007 Critical Areas Guidance/Handbook. The new 2018 Handbook addresses the following:  Wetlands rating system, Voluntary Stewardship Program, agricultural activities, FEMA Biological Opinion, availability of LiDAR, monitoring and adaptive management, a salmon recovery roadmap, and other new issues. Please visit Commerce's Critical Areas page to review the Handbook.

Updated Critical Areas Checklist (February 2018) 

Commerce recenlty updated the Critical Areas Checklist which can be found on Commerce's website and via critical areas checklist . The updated checklist includes links to state agency sources of Best Available Science, with dates for when the science was produced.

Critical Areas Monitoring and Adaptive Management Workshops - 2018

Commerce, Ecology and WDFW conducted a series of workshops around the state in early 2018 to provide tools for and get feedback from counties and cities on how to build local and state monitoring and adaptive management programs for protecting critical areas. The workshops reviewed a new draft chapter in the Critical Areas Handbook, showed how state High Resolution Change Detection Data can help local governments, shared a number of local approaches, and explored challenges and solutions to implementing such a program.

Approximatley 230 people participated in the workshops in Poulsbo, Mount Vernon, Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver, and Moses Lake with positive reviews. The local government and other presentations generated rich conversations around the barriers and solutions to developing and implementing effective monitoring programs.