Checkered Past
Although far short of the fanfare rampant at college basketball venues, teamwork is scoring points for wildlife habitat and public access to recreation lands.
The rally is critical, land managers say, as much of the western forest landscape sportsmen have hunted and the public has roamed for more than a century in Idaho, Montana and Washington is changing as economic markets make real estate development more profitable than wood products.
Private timber company land that has always been free-range for wildlife and generally open to public access is gradually being sold, fragmented, leased, gated and locked up.
The trend, which is bad news for the public and for wildlife, has stimulated some aggressive action from public land managers and conservation groups recognizing that partnerships are the most effective way to counter the threats.
Sportsmen’s groups played a key role in a patchwork of public-private land exchanges that help guarantee the Yakima and Colockum elk herds will have room to roam through a full four seasons of public habitat from the high Cascades and Blewett Pass eastward to the Yakima and Columbia rivers.
“Checkerboard ownership worked well when our neighbors were large timber companies,” said George Shelton, Department of Natural Resources assistant region manager in Ellensburg. “But with investment firms buying the land, there’s no uncertainty about what’s going to happen to the land sooner or later.
“The only way to make sure the state has working forests 80 years from now is to block up our holdings.”
In November, after several years of negotiations, public meetings and appraisals, the DNR was given approval to trade 20,970 acres of state lands scattered in 15 counties in return for 82,548 acres of former Boise-Cascade land owned by Western Pacific Timber.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation played a key role in forming a coalition to stop developing real estate options that threatened the future of Washington’s largest elk herd. The target was the “checkerboard” ownership of state and private timberlands that tend to be just below the area’s national forest lands.
“A lot was at stake in these exchanges,” said Jeff Tayer, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Yakima Region director. “DNR was prepared to pull out. If the negotiations between DNR and Western Pacific were to go the wrong way, public access and big-game migration routes were poised to be disrupted over 80,000 acres, and neighboring public lands would have been impacted as well.”
Tayer and Shelton say the East Slope Cascades land deals are among the most significant achievements in their careers.
Somebody who buys a parcel in the middle of big-game winter range has a right to build a road for access, Tayer explained. “That marginalizes the value of the winter range,” he added.
Nearly as bad for hunters, a landowner who buys property surrounded by public land could preclude public access, he said.
“The Yakima elk herd is pretty healthy primarily because their life-history needs are being met, from summer range to migration routes to winter range. The Colockum area is a different story. There’s already a lot of land conversion in Kittitas County and a lot more fragmentation is possible. Getting as much consolidation as possible is critical to those elk.”
Getting sportsmen behind the project was critical, too.
“This was really crucial,” echoed Bill Essman, a RMEF member and retired wildlife enforcement officer who can look at some of the land exchange area 3 miles as the crow flies from his house near Ellensburg. “There was a proposal for a tram from the bottom of the Naneum (prime elk habitat) to Mission Ridge Ski Area as well as a plan for a paved winter road to the ski resort. We can’t afford any more development like that through the middle of an elk area.”
Big game had a home on these lowland forests when ranches were ranches and timber companies were timber companies, he said. But with Seattle-area people flooding out the I-90 corridor looking for elbow room, houses are popping up on wild land faster than weeds in the garden.
“People keep building up farther in the foothills and the habitat keeps disappearing,” Essman said. Indeed, in Kittitas County alone, applications for subdivisions parcels grew from 1,000 in 2002 to 1,800 in 2005, and county officials say development continues to grow as Microsoft and Google move operations to nearby Quincy.
RMEF members and other sportsmen’s groups quickly raised $200,000 to help the DNR with land appraisals and other prerequisites for the proposed land exchanges.
“Public agencies have trouble moving fast enough when dealing with private developers,” explained Rance Block, the RMEF initiatives director who spearheaded the East Slope Cascades Project.
But the situation demanded more than money, Block said.
The DNR needed public support to get the land exchanges approved by the State Board of Natural Resources. Initial reaction to the proposed exchanges wasn’t universally positive. DNR had to identify parcels scattered in 15 counties to exchange for Western Pacific lands that would enable the agency to block up its holdings on the east slope of he Cascades. Many of those scattered parcels had a local following.
“We really wanted to go out with the story that this is an exchange and we have to give up something,” Block said. “We went through a huge effort, mailing about 20,000 pamphlets to our members and members of the Mule Deer Foundation and the National Wild Turkey Federation. We handed out material at sportsmen’s shows and tried to show people the big picture.
“What we would gain,” he emphasized, “would be worth more than what we would give up.”
More important, what could be lost if the exchanges fell through, would never be replaced.
The campaign worked, turning an atmosphere of skepticism into an overwhelming 95 percent approval in the public responses to the land exchanges, Block said.
“I’ve seen the trend, and the impacts of industrial timberland being developed into 80-acre lots are horrifying,” said Shelton, who’s worked in the DNR for 33 years. “I’m saying that from a hunter’s point of view and from a timber manager’s point of view. The roads into those areas were made for hauling logs, but suddenly they have to be built to the standard of Honda Accords, and yet any one of those lot owners can put up a gate and keep the public out.”
The DNR’s partnership with RMEF dates back to 2002, when the agency was able to block up the first 14,000 acres of checkerboard ownership east of Yakima.
“That was our first big project,” he said. “If the Elk Foundation had not come up with the $50,000 we needed immediately to help cover the costs for appraisals and other things, it wouldn’t have happened.
“That was the start of a relationship that’s worked well for both of us ever since.”
Although RMEF has participated in blocking up more than 100,000 acres of state DNR and WDFW land on the east slope of the Cascades since 2004, there’s much more to do.
DNR continues to seek land consolidation with private companies, and intrastate deals are pending with the Fish and Wildlife Department.
Of course, the newly acquired land will need some attention. The partnerships formed to support the most recent land exchanges will be tapped to help map out roads and travel plans on the new big blocks of public land.
“DNR is looking at updating and upgrading the road system now that they own all of the land,” said Essman, adding that Shelton and other DNR officials have met with local groups, including RMEF members and the Kittitas sportsmen’s club for input. “We’ll have a system to make it clear where you can drive and where you can’t, with a lot of consideration to what deer and elk need.”
“We prefer to keep our roads open,” Shelton said, “but we’ll be putting up gates to protect some places, such as prime elk calving areas.”
Shelton said the DNR didn’t always have a reputation of working so closely with sportsmen and other conservation groups.
“My view of the Elk Foundation has changed so much, starting with the Ahtanum acquisition and then with volunteer projects to enhance aspen groves and volunteers approaching with other good proposals,” Shelton said.
“I used to think the Elk Foundation was just a bunch of hunters who killed elk. Now I see them as conservationists, with unlimited energy, looking at the long term.”
Ironically, hunters who head into the Yakima and Colockum areas for fall hunting trips in 20 years will likely have no idea how close this prime big-game area came to being a developed mess.
“People have always thought of private timberland as being public land,” Shelton said. “We prevented it here, but in other cases, they won’t know the difference until it’s sold to development.”