Help Protect the High Drive Bluffs

Before The New Year

​

The bluffs below High Drive are a treasure to the City of Spokane. They add to the quality of life for all of us who walk and run and bike the trails.

 

The Friends of the Bluff’s mission is to be stewards of the High Drive Bluff Park. We are contacting you in hopes that you will help support this important cause.

 

The bluffs are threatened by development. Most of the 550 acres are owned by the Spokane Parks Department, but it includes several large privately owned parcels. If these parcels are developed, it will turn beautiful forest into housing and make access to the bluff more difficult. Many of the most popular trails would be eliminated, and the Bluff could be separated into two disconnected sections.

 

The Friends of the Bluff is a community voice for protecting High Drive Bluff Park. We are still a new organization and have no professional staff, but we’ve organized hikes with naturalists, planted trees, organized trail maintenance work parties, thinned parts of the bluff as a fire suppression measure, treated invasive weeds and removed litter and dog waste. We’ve negotiated a memorandum of agreement with the City of Spokane and we are making progress in opening up a great new access point near the Rocket Market (www.friendsofthebluff.org/sustainable-trails). None of this would happen without this organization.

 

Become a Friends of the Bluff supporter! You can mail a check to our Post Office Box, or you can go online and donate at www.friendsofthebluff.org/donate. Please consider a $50 or $100 donation, but feel free to send any amount you can. No donation is too small. Whether it is updating our website, getting a good trail map created (www.friendsofthebluff.org/trail-maps ), buying dog doo bags, or buying the necessary materials we will need to build steps at the Rocket Market access point, they all take funds. Your donation will help the Friends of the Bluff cover costs for all of these things and more. We can’t do it without your help. Most of us don’t have enough time to donate to every worthy cause we support. If you use the Bluff, and want to continue to have someone advocate and maintain it, please help us with a donation this year. We promise we will use it wisely.

 

Next year we will investigate options beyond the Conservation Futures Program to try to acquire the most critical private parcels within the Bluff. Our ability to get matching dollars from grants and foundations wil require us to have those matching funds. So, in addition to this donation please consider a large contribution to the “Protect the Bluff” capital fund. You will hear more about it next year.

 

Enjoy the holidays and have a safe and healthy new year. Thank you so much for your time and considering a donation!

Sincerely,

 

Jim Wilson

President of the Friends of the Bluff Board