Blm Trades Land For 10,700 Acres In Lincoln County Blm Has Made Three Major Land Consolidations Involving Lincoln County Since 1991

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has made another giant land deal to block up public land for wildlife and recreation.

BLM acquired 10,700 acres in mid-May from the Bill Harder Ritzville-area ranching family. The property includes Twin Lakes canyon, once a public fishing area until access was shut off in the early 1980s.

The deal was paved by a BLM land consolidation plan devised in 1987, said Kevin Devit, agency realty specialist.

Although the Harders were paid $2.6 million for the Twin Lakes property, BLM exchanged lands to make the deal.

“We didn’t go into a fund and pull out the money,” said BLM spokesman Gary Yaeger.

After three years of planning, about 40 scattered parcels in Stevens and Ferry counties were signed over to Clearwater Land Exchange, a private third party that brokered a simultaneous exchange for Twin Lakes.

“Most of the parcels ranged from 40 to 80 acres and had no public access,” Devit said. “Typically, the exchange company will sell them to adjacent landowners to get its money back.”

“The (Twin Lakes) property is a mixed bag of channeled scabland coulees punctuated by fingers of shrub-steppe and grasslands that, from an ecological standpoint, are in pretty darned good shape,” said Todd Thompson, BLM wildlife specialist.

Livestock production has been the only major impact to the land, he said. The Harders negotiated to continue livestock grazing on part of the land, but at a 60 percent reduction from previous use.

Although some restoration work is planned, good habitat already exists for everything from bobcats to mule deer. Two large lakes and numerous small ponds attract waterfowl ranging from cinnamon teal to canvasbacks and geese.

“There are cliffs and rimrocks, ribbons of riparian area and stringers of ponderosa pine that provide a tremendous amount of diversity. “That means you can have pheasants a quarter mile from ruffed grouse.”

Just north of the Twin Lakes area is another 15,000 acres of land being secured for wildlife management by the Bonneville Power Administration to mitigate for habitat lost to Grand Coulee Dam.

The land won’t be open to public use until access can be developed to avoid other private land, Yaeger said.

“We’ll likely be restricting most of the property to park and walk areas,” he said. “You won’t be able to go in and drive all over.”

In recent years, BLM has liquidated about 90 scattered parcels in northeastern Washington in order to acquire three other major blocks of land:

* Lakeview area, 20,000 acres including portions of Pacific Lake and Crab Creek near Odessa.

* Fishtrap area, about 8,000 acres bordering Hog Canyon and Fishtrap lakes.

* Rustemeyer Ranch, nearly 4,000 acres adjacent to Twin Lakes property.

“There undoubtedly are more scattered parcels that will lend themselves to this sort of exchange in the future,” Devit said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map of Upper Crab Creek area

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Upper Crab Creek management area land exchange By trading scattered landholdings, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has acquired a more concentrated 10,700 acres in Lincoln County. The “Twin Lakes” property was purchased from Ritzville-area rancher Bill Harder and family for $2.6 million in mid-May. Combined with previously acquired BLM property and state land, the Twin Lakes acquisition forms a contiguous unit of more than 16,000 acres of public land.