Forest Service lands big donation

Two oversized land deeds signed over to the Wenatchee National Forest yesterday represent something pretty new in Washington: Environmentalists and timber companies working together to save old-growth forests, along with their spotted owls and salmon, their birds and bears.

The donation of about 3 square miles of old-growth forests in the Cascade Mountains is the largest land gift ever to the Forest Service in Washington. It represents an alternative to land exchanges between the government and timber companies that have provoked loud outcries from environmentalists and others.

Such privately financed donations to the Forest Service hardly ever have happened in the past. In fact, except for land given yesterday and earlier this year by the Cascades Conservation Partnership, you'd have to go back to the 1930s to find a land donation to the Forest Service of comparable size in Washington, said Fred Munson, executive director of the partnership. And that gift involved a man strapped by the Depression who was unable to pay the property taxes on the acreage.

This is different.

"It's a model for the whole United States," said U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, a Republican from Bellevue. "It brings together constituencies that don't usually work together."

Said Jeff Stewart of the Conservation Partnership: "This is a big victory for keeping a small area of this region wild."

And the goal is to keep a lot more of Washington wild. The Conservation Partnership wants to raise $25 million in private money, and already has come up with more than $11 million. The plan is to use the private donations to help convince Congress to break loose $100 million in government money.

It would be used to buy more than 75,000 acres linking the Alpine Lakes Wilderness north of Interstate 90 with the Mount Rainier area, including some areas popular for hiking, camping and fishing.

Timber companies own most of the land. They got it from their parent corporations, the railroads of the 1800s, which were granted every other square mile of land by the government in corridors alongside their rails. The land was granted in exchange for laying the tracks to connect America's East and West.

Today, though, those lands are targeted for logging unless they are bought and set aside. The timber companies are fine with selling the land, but they want a fair price, their representatives say.

"We have another win-win for the citizens of Washington," Plum Creek Timber spokesman Bob Jirsa said in a prepared statement.

If Plum Creek and the other timber companies logged their land, they would shred the forests in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle, creating a barrier to movement by animals in the mountain range, biologists say. The result: Less genetic diversity as animal populations are isolated, leading to a smaller likelihood that endangered animals will survive in the long run, biologists say.

The federal government tried to solve the problem several years ago by trading away other lands, primarily near Mount St. Helens, for timberland around I-90. But some environmentalists protested vehemently, some even taking perches in Douglas fir trees near Randle and threatening to stay there until the deal was called off.

The deal was scaled back significantly, with the timber interests and the environmentalists agreeing to work together to get government and private money to buy the land from the timber companies for a fair price.

"Every bit of national forest land is precious to the people of this state," Sonny O'Neal, Wenatchee National Forest supervisor, said yesterday at the signing ceremony in Seattle. "Trading one piece of land for another just doesn't work anymore."

The two parcels turned over to the government yesterday were:

Negro Creek, three properties totaling 1,241 acres near Wenatchee that include old-growth stands of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine sheltering spotted owls and other animals dependent on old-growth forests. The area is named after an early settler, a former slave from Louisiana named Antoine.

Jim Creek, a 1-square-mile parcel south of Cle Elum covered in Douglas fir, hemlock, true firs, lodgepole pine and other trees. It shelters spotted owls, and wolves have been seen on the property.

As for the Conservation Partnership's larger land-buying plans, there is no guarantee they will work. In the next six weeks, Congress will decide how much to allocate for the land purchases. Last year Congress came up with $26.3 million. But a key player in that deal was U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who was voted out of office last fall.

This year Dunn is expected to help smooth the way with the Bush White House. And several members of the Washington delegation sit on the appropriations committees. "We would be tremendously lucky if we got that this year," Munson said, "but we can dream."