The Big Deal

The year 2006 is a defining moment for elk, sportsmen and the hunting-related industry along the east slope of the Cascades. The Washington Department of Natural Resources is on the brink of negotiating a complex set of deals that could combine into one of the largest public land exchanges in state history.

If the agreements involving state agencies and private timber companies can be reached, the future is brighter for elk and mule deer in the region west of Yakima and the Colockum Wildlife Area near Ellensburg.

Failure of the negotiations would unleash development that could lead to the demise of thriving elk herds and curtail public hunting access in the breadbasket of Washington’s big-game territory.

About 240,000 acres are involved in proposed exchanges among the DNR, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and several corporate land holders, including Western Pacific Timber. The regional managers for both state agencies last month called the negotiations the most significant opportunity in their careers.

The looming crisis stems from “checkerboard pattern” land ownership created more than 140 years ago after the United States Government granted millions of acres in alternating land sections to railroad companies as an incentive to develop the West.

For more than a century, most of those corporate lands were managed for profit by resource companies. To most sportsmen, corporate lands worked by forest product companies such as Boise-Cascade and Plum Creek have been indistinguishable from public land, since the managers generally allowed free access to hunt and roam on lands that intermingled with state and national forests.

In a modern economy, however, timber companies have found that in many cases they can generate more profit for shareholders by developing or selling choice parcels along streams and lowland meadows that almost invariably are also choice wildlife habitats.

About 200,000 acres of former Boise-Cascade lands in Yakima and Kittitas counties changed ownership three times in eight months before being purchased last year by Western Pacific Timber, owned by timberlands tycoon Tim Blixseth of Boise.

Washington’s regional Fish and Wildlife and DNR managers see doom in checkerboard ownership and salvation in exchanges that would allow them to consolidate scattered parcels into blocks of single ownership.

Block ownership also would benefit Blixseth, who said he is willing to negotiate land exchanges or timber rights for about 108,000 acres of Western Pacific property.

“In my entire career, I haven’t seen a bigger threat to wildlife and wildlife access than the changes in corporate timber lands,” said Jeff Tayer, Fish and Wildlife Department regional manager in Yakima. “Hunting access could be lost overnight.

“The situation could be even worse if development in the checkerboard lands forced us to lift some seasonal road closures, such as those in the Oak Creek Wildlife Area where we feed elk during winter.”

About half of the Yakima herd’s 9,500 animals don’t have anywhere else to go during some winters, since nearly 100 miles of 8-foot-high fences have been built in the region to keep them off the developed lands that occupy much of their natural winter range.

If more development occurs and road access must be allowed into elk migration corridors and winter ranges, Tayer said, “The resulting disturbance would be a huge setback for elk herds.”

“Land management is driven by the neighbors around us,” said George Shelton, DNR assistant regional manager in Ellensburg. “The adjacent ownership dictates what we can do in terms of road management and densities, forest practices, controlled burns and public access.”

DNR is required to manage its lands for profit to fund the trust for Washington schools, he explained, noting: “We can no longer manage effectively in checkerboard ownership.”

Bill Boyum, DNR’s regional manager in Ellensburg, was even more explicit: “We’re getting to the point that our options are to block up or sell out, even though selling out is our last resort.”

Rance Block, regional director for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, said generating support and funding for appraisals to move the exchanges forward is his highest priority. The foundation is trying to raise $200,000 from its own members and other wildlife conservation groups to help pay technical costs that are bogging down the exchange negotiations among the cash-strapped agencies.

“This project is of a scale and importance I’ve never seen in my career,” Block said.

“Look at the map and you can see how these elk are getting squeezed as Yakima and Wenatchee expand into winter ranges and as Cle Elum and Ellensburg become bedroom communities for Seattle. More cabin sites and destination ski resorts are being scoped out, and with wind farms getting popular and Google and Microsoft breaking ground in Quincy, it’s going to get worse, fast.”

Wildlife officials said the region’s wildlife can’t afford to loose much more low- and mid-elevation space.

“About two-thirds of Washington’s native shrub-steppe is already gone,” said Tayer. “A lot of what’s left is degraded or fragmented. Big blocks of existing shrub-steppe are valuable for a wide variety of species, from pygmy rabbits and sage grouse to winter range for deer and elk. Winter range is the limiting factor for how large an elk herd can be.”

One phase of the land deals would give Fish and Wildlife control of DNR’s shrub-steppe lands in exchange for Fish and Wildlife’s timberlands. This exchange is generally regarded as the best scenario for the objectives of both agencies and for wildlife, Tayer said.

Other DNR deals involve checkerboard ownership with private companies, primarily Western Pacific.

“This is our agency’s time for land exchanges,” said DNR’s Shelton. “It’s taken years to determine the parcels we’d be interested in exchanging and finding out how they need to be appraised according to different agency requirements. Now we’re negotiating.

“It’s really an exciting time. It all could come to pass, or not. We’re right at the cusp.”

From Blewett Pass east all the way down through the winter range to the Columbia River, some 280,000 acres would be federal or state land, he said, referring to just the north half of the land-exchange area.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Shelton said. “But to make it come true, we have to trade parcels all over the state. Every parcel has a neighbor or user who’s against action on that piece of ground.

“There’s a million moving parts. We can throw sand in a few gears, but too much sand and it all comes apart.”