Best Management Practices I Afforestation I Water Quality I Wildlife Mgt I Land Access
			Early settlers to the Palouse subsisted on crops grown on the region's fertile soils. Often they had to clear timber from their homesteads to create farmland. Over time, they converted hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland to farms.
				This deforestation has resulted in impaired water quality in many of the area's streams. For most of these streams water quality can only be recovered by afforestation, the act of reclaiming forests by planting trees. Over the past several years Bennett Lumber has acquired several hundred acres of old farmland as part of their program to purchase timberland.
			To date, almost 1,200 acres have been reclaimed. Eventually these lands will revert back to forests, with the same native flora and fauna found in the adjacent timberlands.