Land trusts large and small gaining momentum

SEATTLE -- All over the Northwest and across the country, a growing number of conservation groups are joining forces and scraping together money to keep undeveloped land from being gobbled up by suburban development.

But it's not always a battle between developers and tree-huggers.

"Businesses understand that people live in a community because of the natural beauty in it, and they're really heartbroken when they see their community becoming nothing but a patchwork of strip malls and cookie cutter subdivisions," said Martha Nudel, spokeswoman for the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit meeting in Seattle on Saturday.

Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance gives money, training and other help to more than 1,200 land trusts nationwide, which have preserved about 6.2 million acres of open space nationally in the past two decades.

Most of the groups were formed in the mid- to late-1980s, after Congress made it easier for people and businesses to get tax breaks for donating land. Their fund-raising tactics vary from government grants, private donations, low-interest loans, voter-approved bonds, membership dues, even backyard garden tours.

In six Northwest states -- Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Wyoming -- 70 land trusts have set aside more than 885,000 acres of open space in the past two decades.

In areas like the Puget Sound region, population growth makes residential development an inevitability. That could pit open-space advocates against the real-estate industry, but in many cases, land trusts say head-butting between conservationists and developers is rare.

"They see it the same way ... maintaining and increasing the value of a community. So there is a unity there," said Russ Shay, public policy director for the Land Trust Alliance.

Preserving open space may not make sense for many smaller developers, said Peter Orser, executive vice president of Quadrant, a real estate developer and home builder based in Bellevue, east of Seattle.

But it can reap huge rewards for those who can afford it, said Orser, who sits on the board of one of the state's largest land trusts, the Cascade Land Conservancy.

"What people have come to acknowledge is that the quality of the community and the contribution back to the comity is as important as just the development itself," Orser said.

Some land deals are huge, like the proposed Evergreen Forest Trust -- a plan the Cascade Land Conservancy drew up with timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. to preserve more than 100,000 acres in the foothills of Washington state's Cascade Mountains east of Seattle.

By setting aside 80 percent of the Snoqualmie Tree Farm for timber harvesting, the deal sets up a source of revenue that would pay off the tax-free bonds used to buy the land, recently valued at $185 million, from Weyerhaeuser. The rest would be set aside as permanent open space.

The unprecedented plan has not yet received congressional approval to sell the bonds, but it cleared a hurdle on Thursday, when a bill to allow the sale of the bonds passed out of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., the bill's sponsor, said the deal "will protect vital habitats and watershed, it will allow the area to be used for recreation and it will keep the mills working so that timber workers can retain their jobs."

The legislation, attached to an armed services bill, is scheduled to go to the House floor March 6, Dunn said Friday.

The acreage of the Evergreen Forest Trust deal alone is about 10 times the amount the Cascade Land Conservancy has preserved since it was founded in 1989. The 3,000-member group has led nearly 50 land-protection deals, large and small, in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, all worth about $75 million, according to Gene Duvernoy, the organization's president.

It's required constant, often complex collaboration with landowners and other conservation groups.

"Land trusts are getting increasingly sophisticated in structuring partnerships with other nonprofits, businesses and governments that meet the financial objectives of the other parties, but more importantly result in conservation gains," Duvernoy said.

It's not always easy.

At the height of the dot-com boom, more than two dozen environmental and civic groups joined with high-tech millionaires. They formed the Cascades Conservation Partnership -- technically not a land trust, since its plan is to buy about 70,000 acres of land from timber companies and turn it over to the U.S. Forest Service rather than owning it and managing the land itself.

The plan drawn up three years ago was to raise $25 million in private money and get another $100 million from Congress. So far, the group has raised about $15 million, and Congress has pitched in only $40 million -- leaving $70 million left to raise.

"These are challenging times both in terms of private philanthropy and federal budgets," said Mitch Friedman, executive director of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance and a member of the conservation partnership's steering committee. "So we've focused our priorities on saving the vital organs, the key lands needed to maintain the habitat lifeline between the north and central Cascades."

On the smaller end of the scale, the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust has set aside 376 acres in the past 12 years.

"Our island is between the metropolitan areas of Seattle and Tacoma, so there's an intense pressure for development in a really wonderful island setting," said Julie Burman, the group's executive director.

In 2001, the 470-member group worked with the Audubon Society to acquire 30 acres near a tree-ringed pond that falls within the northern migration route for neotropical songbirds. Its biggest deal to date was the $2.5 million 155-acre Shinglemill Salmon Preserve completed last year.

The Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust gets most of its money from federal, state and local grants. It also relies on private donations, dues from its 470 members, and various community fund-raisers, like tours of backyard gardens.

What's driving the land trust movement? Burman's theory is that "it's a recognition that the pressure from development is strong and if we're going to save special places, the time is now."

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On the Net:

Land Trust Alliance: http://www.lta.org/

Cascade Land Conservancy: http://www.cascadeland.org/

Cascades Conservation Partnership: http://www.ecosystem.org/tccp/