Fig. 1

Study area and jurisdictional context. The ancestral territories of the Colville Confederated Tribes expand far beyond what is now known as the Colville Reservation, through Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, USA, and British Columbia, Canada (CCT 2017). The Colville Reservation was established by Executive Orders of 9 April and 2 July 1872 to originally encompass the lands between the Okanogan and Columbia rivers and the USA-Canada border (a and b). The Spokane and Kalispel tribes were not designated to live on the Colville Reservation, though. The Spokane Reservation was established by Executive Order of 18 January 1881 (c) and the Kalispel Reservation was established more than three decades later by Executive Order of 23 March 1914 (d). On 1 July 1892, an act of Congress executed the cession of all the Colville Reservation lands from Township 35 (48°28′56″ N) to the Canadian border for allotment or sale (b). On 1 March 1907, most of the ceded north half from Range 33 (118°52′12″ W) to the Columbia River was declared the Colville Forest Preserve by presidential proclamation of Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently included in the Colville National Forest. Red outline: this study focused on the Old North Half now administered by the Colville National Forest, and a portion of the present-day Colville Reservation. Additionally, vegetation was sampled on 30 paired plots within the test area (highlighted in yellow), which covers part of the area burned by the 2015 North Star fire within the Northeastern Washington Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Area (CFLRP) project boundary. Base maps provided by ESRI (2014)