Kidd Island Bay hillside preserved

A large section of the Kidd Island Bay peninsula will remain forever protected from development, preserving one of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s most visible hillsides, after the owners put the property in a conservation easement.

Owners John Magnuson and Tom and Christine Anderl formalized an agreement Tuesday with the Inland Northwest Land Trust to preserve the 21 acres directly across the lake from Tubbs Hill.

“It’s the last piece of hillside of any substantial size that hasn’t been carved up,” said Magnuson, a local attorney and developer. “I just didn’t think the best use of it was to put 14 houses on it.”

Magnuson and the Anderls will retain ownership and control of the property but gave up their development rights to the land trust. That means the hillside will forever remain in its natural, undisturbed condition.

The land trust’s executive director, Chris DeForest, hopes that the deal will inspire other private land owners around the lake to consider protecting the properties that make Coeur d’Alene and the lake so beautiful.

“Land around the lake is so valuable and it’s disappearing so rapidly it’s important to protect what we can when we still can,” DeForest said.

The Kidd Island Bay land is just south of Cougar Bay, where the land trust already holds two conservation easements. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Nature Conservancy and Kootenai County also have preservation projects in Cougar Bay.

The Kidd Island Bay property also is in the trust’s Wild Lifeline that stretches from Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge south of Spokane, through the Dishman Hills, across Mica Peak and down to the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene at Cougar Bay and Kidd Island Bay. The trust has helped protect more than 1,700 acres in this corridor.

Magnuson said the property had been in the family of Fred Murphy, a widely known tugboat captain on Lake Coeur d’Alene, for decades and that they recognized preservation was the best use of the property. The hillside could have been developed into a 13-lot subdivision.

“It’s permanent,” Magnuson said. “It can’t be undone even if the property sells.”