Blm Land Swap Worries Ranchers But Outdoor Enthusiasts Thrilled By New Recreation Opportunities

Sportsmen are happy, but some landowners are upset about U.S. Bureau of Land Management efforts to trade small, scattered parcels of land for large, consolidated tracts.

The BLM is trading mountainous land in Stevens and Ferry counties for grassy “channeled scabland” in southwestern Lincoln County. The Colville National Forest has lots of land like the largely inaccessible parcels the BLM is trading away, but the public has relatively little scabland in northeastern Washington.

The BLM’s new land near Odessa was scarred by ice-age flooding. Its coulees and potholes provide prime habitat for grouse, ducks and other wildlife. The area also is prized for its fishing.

“It’s a real unique area, and (the BLM) has opened it to more people,” said Glenn Paulson, who manages a private hunting reserve in the vicinity.

Just last week he found several groups of local fishermen enjoying the BLM’s new Twin Lakes property, which had been closed to outdoorsmen for a decade. A man was teaching his two sons to fish, as his father taught him before the previous owner barred access to the lake.

Bird watchers, hikers and even root gatherers also are using the new federal land, and hunting groups are excited about the prospects for improved game bird habitat, Paulson said.

As a former rancher and a longtime agriculture teacher, Paulson also appreciates what he said has been widespread local criticism of the BLM land acquisitions.

Lincoln County ranchers and public officials are concerned the BLM land trades will hurt their economy, driving up land prices and forcing ranchers out of business.

“There’s a lot of concern about it,” said County Commissioner Ted Hopkins, who represents the district where the BLM has acquired almost 40,000 acres, or about 3 percent of the land in the county.

“They are paying such a price that no local guy can pay that and raise cows on it, so it just blows the local price structure to pieces,” Hopkins added. “In some cases, the price is at least double of what we think it’s worth locally.”

Joe Buesing, Washington district manager for the BLM, said appraisals show the agency is getting land at the going rate.

Figures are skewed because sellers have forced the agency to take some expensive farmland or houses in addition to the shrub-steppe land it wanted, he said.

Technically, the BLM isn’t buying or selling anything. A private company, Clearwater Land Exchange of Orofino, Idaho, arranges complicated transactions in which Clearwater trades land with the BLM, and other parties do the buying and selling.

Clearwater partner Darrell Olson said other agencies, including the Bonneville Power Administration, drove up Lincoln County land prices with purchases for wildlife mitigation.

“We didn’t set the market. It was set for us,” Olson said. “We took the slack out of the market, I suppose.”

Although county commissioners fear for the county’s economy, the trades actually are good for the county government. Federal payments in lieu of taxes are more than 60 percent greater than the lost property taxes.

In Stevens County, where BLM land is being turned over to taxpayers, people are still unhappy. They say adjacent landowners haven’t had an adequate opportunity to acquire the property.

The controversy bubbled up in recent meetings of the county’s new Federal Lands Advisory Committee.

“What concerns everybody is they weren’t giving the adjoining landowners rights to purchase the property or even letting them know that it was up for sale,” said committee chairman Mike Steinbach.

Many adjacent property owners apparently weren’t notified and a legal notice of the proposed land swap was published only in the Federal Register and The Spokesman-Review, not one of the weeklies that serve as the county’s official newspaper. Buesing said any omission in the mailing was inadvertent, but the BLM is not required to give adjacent landowners any special treatment.

Northport-area resident Grady Knight raised the issue after an unsuccessful effort to buy some BLM land next to his. He planned to log the land and sell it.

Knight said he approached Clearwater and “for two years they told me that nobody else was interested in this land and I would be able to buy it.” Then, after several opportunities to protest the land swaps had expired, he said Clearwater officials told him the land would be sold to a Clarkston, Wash., timber company.

So Knight filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of an appeal by the Oregon Natural Resources Council, an environmental group that wanted to prevent logging on the 39 parcels the BLM planned to trade away in Stevens and Ferry counties. Despite Knight’s intention to log the property, the environmentalists embraced his arguments.

Although the land swap was completed earlier this year, the federal Interior Board of Land Appeals still has not ruled on the appeal. Olson said the appeal already has caused a one-year delay and cost the public $288,000 when timber values fell and the BLM land had to be reappraised.

Knight has continued to stir the pot with a variety of charges. He cited county appraisal records to argue that the BLM traded away land at a fraction of its true value.

“There’s no doubt that an auction is the final arbiter of market value,” Buesing said, but he and Olson insisted that top-notch independent appraisers ensure the BLM gets market value on both sides of the trade.

Buesing said the BLM shuns auctions because the proceeds would have to go into the federal treasury for general use, not to acquire more land. Also, he said the agency benefits from getting Clearwater to help pay for expensive studies federal regulations require before the BLM can give up land.

Olson said his company specializes in filling that niche, and has virtually no competition. He said his company will not accept more than a 6 percent margin on the trades, but made “barely over 5 percent” on the most recent exchange, the second such in northeastern Washington.

Although Olson said Clearwater would gladly submit to a federal audit, Buesing said the BLM doesn’t control or even monitor Clearwater’s earnings.

Olson said Clearwater makes its money on premiums that large timber companies are willing to pay to avoid the red tape of dealing with the federal government. He said he tries to accommodate individuals who want to buy BLM land, but prefers to deal with big companies because of their willingness to pay, their dependability and the prospect of future transactions.

That’s why Knight’s overture was rejected, Olson said, adding that Knight was never promised he could buy the land. Still, Olson said he asked the buyer, the Granger Co., to resell some of the land to Knight.

Olson said Knight refused to talk to a Granger representative.

In the future, the BLM has agreed to send letters to all adjacent landowners in Stevens County and to advertise proposed swaps in two weekly newspapers in the county.

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