Bargaining For Big Land Blm Attempts To Consolidate Holdings

“When it comes to managing wildlife habitat, more is better,” said Todd Thompson, wildlife specialist for the U.S Bureau of Land Management.

A hundred acres of prime grassland won’t do much for the recovery of native sharptail grouse.

A block of 10,000 acres managed with sharptails in mind could be a boon, he said.

As obvious as this seems, not everyone is cheering a recent land trade in which BLM continued a program to consolidate land in dry portions of the state, where BLM can exert management plans.

The consolidations come at the price of liquidating scattered forest lands in northeastern Washington.

Some wildlife biologists say securing large tracts of public land is a major stride toward preserving low-profile creatures such as sharptails, sage sparrows, burrowing owls and other species that depend on a dryland habitat known as shrub-steppe.

“We’re not at all against BLM trying to protect sagebrush habitat,” said Mike Peterson of Republic. “The problem with this land exchange is that it trades a bunch of precious old growth ponderosa pines for overgrazed range land.”

Peterson specializes in monitoring public land management decisions for the Spokane-based Inland Empire Public Lands Council.

The council and other conservation groups have filed a lawsuit to get more public oversight of the land deals. The suit blocked some trades that might have occurred last week. But a ruling from a federal court in Spokane allowed a major portion of a complicated land swap to close.

The recent exchange involved 20 parcels of northeastern Washington timber land valued at $3.6 million. This land was sold to private timber companies, including Boise-Cascade, Inland Empire Paper, Arden Tree Farms and Vaagen Brothers, said Kevin Devitt, BLM realty specialist.

The value of the land acquired was $2.7 million.

“The balance of roughly $900,000 sits in the bank until we can identify another piece of ground to purchase,” Devitt said.

The parcels BLM purchased on June 6 were near:

Coffee Pot Lake in Lincoln County, 930 acres for $794,000.

Crab Creek in Lincoln County, 1,500 acres for $257,000.

Twin Lakes in Lincoln County, 960 acres for $161,000.

Packer Creek in Whitman County southwest of Rock Lake, 1,630 acres for $519,000.

Huckleberry Range timber land in Stevens County, 925 acres for $994,000.

Since 1989, BLM has disposed of about 190 parcels in Eastern Washington totaling about 17,000 acres, Devitt said. The disposed lands are scattered throughout the east side of the state, but mostly in Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties.

By selling those valuable timber lands, BLM has been able to acquire roughly 60,000 acres, about 40,000 of which are in Lincoln County.

“The timber lands are worth much more money,” said Thompson. “But to certain species, the shrub-steppe habitat and riparian areas are priceless.”

Riparian habitat - the term for the fecund land along streams - holds and produces more wild birds, fish and animals than any other single habitat found in Eastern Washington.

Yet streamside areas are the first to be trashed by human encroachments ranging from roads and development to livestock grazing.

“Riparian vegetation in the West is in much more jeopardy than old growth,” said Jerry Hickman, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department biologist assigned to Lincoln County. “Dealing with one agency to get some concessions for wildlife habitat is a lot easier than trying to work with a dozen landowners.”

Thompson said BLM has guidelines to give wildlife a role in management decisions.

“Most of the land we’ve acquired has been used extensively by livestock, often with less concern for wildlife and more for economic output,” Thompson said.

“Grazing probably is not going to disappear on BLM lands, but on every parcel we’ve got, we’ve made adjustments to grazing, and in a few cases, there’s no grazing at all.”

Devitt said grazing has been reduced 40-60 percent on lands BLM has acquired in recent years.

So far, Peterson said, there’s little optimism that BLM can change the course of grazing impacts.

“When you can go out to Fishtrap Lake, look at a fence line and see that the BLM land is in worse condition than private land on the other side, it makes you wonder,” he said.

“Is this worth giving up some 300-400 acre stands of old growth that’s still in natural condition?”

“Every parcel of our land, no matter how large or small, has value to wildlife,” Thompson said. “But just because some of these 40- to 60-acre parcels had some old trees on them doesn’t mean they qualified as old-growth habitat.”

Peterson said BLM uses an old-growth definition that’s out of date.

“We’ve learned a lot in the 14 years since BLM came out with its resource management plan and definitions of old growth,” he said. “Scientific panels are saying we shouldn’t be cutting any old growth ponderosa pine - there’s that little left.”

Devitt explained that few people know BLM controls land in northeastern Washington because most of the parcels are small, scattered and surrounded by private lands that offer no public access.

“Our plan is to rearrange ownerships to be more efficient and improve public access,” he said.

“BLM only has 57,000 acres of forest land in the state. If people are really concerned about old-growth forests, they should concentrate their efforts on the Forest Service - they control millions of acres of timber.”

The scattered, inaccessible nature of BLM’s forest has been an asset for wildlife, Peterson said.

“With no access, the trees can’t be cut,” he said. “Unfortunately, the land exchanges are putting these old growth areas into the hands of timber companies that have only one intention.”

The current lawsuit filed by conservationists has little chance of unraveling the land trades and sales already consummated.

“Hopefully, the lawsuit will bring out that the American public is getting ripped off,” Peterson said. “We hope we can get a look at the appraisals. By examining the land, it appears to us the timber on the parcels being traded is worth far more than the public is getting.”

Some people in Republic are outraged that BLM is trading two parcels totaling 434 areas on Mount Gibraltar, the prominent mountain south of town.

“These are areas that are important visually for our town as well as for mule deer habitat,” Peterson said. “BLM disregarded Fish and Wildlife recommendations that some of these parcels not be included in the trades.”

As a wildlife biologist, Thompson sees the land consolidations as his only hope for having a long-lasting positive impact for wildlife.

The cast of critters dependent on shrub-steppe habitat ranges from pygmy rabbits to mule deer, from ferruginous hawks to a variety of neotropical birds.

The most recent acquisitions also hold the rare flowering plant called polemonium pectinatum, giving BLM control of 80 percent of its known habitat, Thompson said.

“Because we can come up with a plan to protect it, we’ve reduced the potential for it to be listed as an endangered species,” he said.

The benefits of big blocks of land appear to be paying off for the sharptail grouse, which was extirpated from Oregon, and nearly disappeared from Idaho and Washington.

Combined with the 9,115-acre Swanson Lakes Management Area, controlled by the Washington Fish and Wildlife department, BLM’s Twin Lakes property, acquired two years ago, apparently is succeeding in boosting the native bird’s recovery.

The new acquisition has boosted Twin Lakes to 11,660 acres.

This spring, for the first time in 30 years, sharptails established a new mating ground on public land in Washington, Thompson said.

“Of course, with all the precipitation last year and this year, everyone looks like a good land manager,” Thompson said. “The proof of how well we’re doing won’t come until the first series of drought years.”

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