Forest Service Snags Trout Habitat County Let Deal Go Through After Groups Offset Lost Taxes

The Colville National Forest will gain 880 acres of trout and wildlife habitat in the Republic area this year, and Ferry County will get $46,500 to offset taxes it might have received if the land had gone to another buyer.

The land, about eight miles northwest of Republic near Storm King Mountain, hasn’t been on the tax rolls since the city of Seattle acquired it about 20 years ago as part of a complicated land swap. But Seattle had no use for the property and wanted to sell it.

Known as the Bowe Ranch, the land was left over from property the city bought all around the state to trade for Forest Service land in the city’s Cedar River Watershed.

Glenn Koehn, assistant lands officer for the Colville National Forest, said the Forest Service was willing to pay cash for the Bowe Ranch because it contains one of seven genetically pure populations of interior redband trout in the forest. The future of the subspecies of rainbow trout is considered “sensitive” by the Forest Service and “of concern” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Koehn said the land is to be purchased in two phases. He said this year’s $2.1 million purchase was enabled by a $1.75 million allocation that U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt was instrumental in arranging.

Forest officials hope to purchase the remaining 789 acres next year for $2.3 million, Koehn said.

Plans call for all of the land to be governed by the forest’s regular management program.

Ferry County commissioners agreed not to oppose the deal when the Trust for Public Land and Seattle Public Utilities offered to pay the county $46,500 in lieu of property taxes that might have come from a private buyer.

Commissioners routinely oppose transactions that would shrink the county’s already tiny tax base. All but about 15 percent of the land in the county is tax-exempt because it is government owned or within the Colville Indian Reservation.