Land deal parcels out habitat, logging

Public funds go to purchase nearly 4,000 acres of habitat for rare birds, but plans call for up to two-thirds of to be logged by the Siletz Tribe.

Threatened marbled murrelets need old-growth trees to nest and raise their young. Photo by Tom Hamer.

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz has acquired almost 4,000 acres of coastal forest that will double the size of the tribe's reservation while setting aside at least 1,200 acres of protected habitat for the threatened marbled murrelet seabird.

The deal also will allow commercial logging on 2,600 acres of the land - logging that wasn't taking place before the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service bought the property from two timber companies, using $15 million set aside to deal with damage caused by the New Carissa shipwreck.

When the 660-foot cargo freighter beached off Coos Bay's North Spit in 1999, it spilled 70,000 gallons of oil in the water and on the beach, which killed 262 marbled murrelets, among other species.

That triggered lawsuits that dragged on for years but also allowed the federal government to tap into a special fund that sets aside money from taxes that shipping companies pay, to mitigate damages caused when something goes wrong.

After years of negotiation, the Fish & Wildlife Service got $15.5 million from the U.S. Coast Guard's National Pollution Fund Center.

The next question was where to spend the money. Since the funds were acquired to restore habitat for the marbled murrelet, a seabird that likes to build nests in big trees on the coast, federal officials decided to look for a parcel of land to set aside for habitat. Such parcels are rare in the United States, particularly in Oregon.

After a lengthy search, the government found a 3,851-acre property in Lincoln County, about 35 miles (as the bird flies) from Waldport, where the bow of the New Carissa drifted after the first failed attempt to remove the wreck, and where most of the seabirds killed or injured by the spill were.

The parcels were owned by two timber companies, Forest Capital Partners and Plum Creek Timber Co., and contained as many as 17 occupied nesting sites for the marbled murrelet.

It was considered a good stretch of land because the murrelet likes to nest in big tall trees inland but close to the coast, such as Western red cedar and old-growth Douglas fir.

Initially, the idea was to buy the property and then put it in a conservation easement that would be managed by an agency with experience keeping land in good shape for protected species, such as the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

That's when Lincoln County Commissioner Terry Thompson piped up. He didn't want the county to lose the $17,000 to $20,000 in annual tax revenues it gets from the timber companies, which would happen if the property went into state or federal government ownership.

Thompson had a better idea: Give it to the Siletz. The tribe could log part of the property in order to generate some tax revenue (and profits for the tribe) while still protecting about a third of it for the bird.

What's a little unclear, however, is how that represents a change that favors the murrelet.

The third of the property that will be set aside to protect the marbled murrelet is already set aside to protect the marbled murrelet, albeit voluntarily and by the timber companies that owned it.

The third of the property that is designated for commercial logging may see more timber felling than it did when it was owned by the timber companies. And the last parcel, which is to be managed in such a way as to encourage new habitat for the bird, will be commercially logged to accomplish that goal - as a buffer between the commercial logging area and the murrelet habitat, officials say.

The thinning of trees, federal wildlife officials say, will encourage bigger trees to flourish, which will ultimately benefit the bird, even if that piece of land isn't specifically protected.

"We certainly are happy to see some steps being taken to protect murrelet habitat," said Steve Pedery, conservation director for the Portland-based nonprofit Oregon Wild. "But I'm not sure it really makes sense for taxpayers to be fronting $15 million for land that will then be turned around and logged. I don't think that's how taxpayers expect these kinds of conservation deals to work."

The reason for this unusual approach is twofold, said Larry Mangan, senior wildlife biologist at the Bureau of Land Management and a chief architect of the deal.

The timber companies who owned the property before had every right to log it, even though they'd mostly chosen to leave it alone until this point.

The deal announced Tuesday guarantees that at least a third of the property will be protected. And, in calculating how much land the government needed to set aside to make up for the 262 birds that were lost, 1,200 acres was the number officials arrived at. If the second third works out to be good habitat, too, that means the bird could get twice as much land as it needs to rebound from the effects of the New Carissa.

"Under the existing law, they could have logged it, but they chose not to," Mangan said. "This is a way to permanently protect it in the future."

Secondly, it satisfies Thompson's concerns that the property stay on the tax rolls. Like many of the state's 18 counties that have seen federal timber revenues plummet, Lincoln County officials are having to slash their budgets to bare-bones levels.

"We don't want any more than we got before," Thompson said Tuesday. "We just want it to be the same."

Paul Engelmeyer, who manages the nearby Tenmile Creek Sanctuary for the National Audubon Society, was less skeptical than Pedery about the land deal.

He said the nonprofit supports the purchase and the transfer of the property because it prevents future logging on the 1,200 acres.

The problem, Engelmeyer said, is that the Siletz tribe has yet to submit its management plan for the other two-thirds, so it's impossible to know how bird-friendly it will be, even though government agencies will have yea-or-nay authority on the plan once it's drawn up.

"They allude to the potential for timber management in (murrelet) occupied sites," Engelmeyer said. "That's not mitigation. Mitigation is you identify habitat and protect it."

Fish & Wildlife spokesman Phil Carroll said the logging on the third of the property where new habitat will be created will be thinning, so that bigger trees aren't crowded out by the thick stands that now occupy the property.

"The stands that have reproduced after harvest are generally very thick, which slows down their growth, and it takes a long time for bigger, stronger trees to shade out weaker trees," Carroll said.

Engelmeyer questioned, however, whether the third of the property where the tribe will seek to create new habitat actually will benefit the bird.