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Forest
Service lands big donation |
August
16, 2001, 08:45 PM m- KING 5 |
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SEATTLE – Two land deeds
turned over to the Wenatchee National Forest
represent an unusual partnership between
environmentalists and timber companies to save
old-growth forests. |
The donation of about 3 square miles of forest
in the Cascade Range is an alternative to land
exchanges between the government and timber
companies that environmentalists have opposed.
"It`s a model for the whole United
States," said U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn,
R-Wash. "It brings together
constituencies that don`t usually work
together." The two parcels turned over
were Negro Creek, 1,241 acres near Wenatchee,
and Jim Creek, a 1-square-mile parcel south of
Cle Elum.
Both contain old-growth trees, spotted owls
and other animals that need old-growth
habitat.
The donation Wednesday is only the third
sizable land gift given to the Forest Service
in Washington state since the 1930s, said Fred
Munson, executive director of the Cascades
Conservation Partnership. The partnership also
donated land earlier this year, and before
that, a man strapped by the Depression gave up
his land because he couldn't pay the property
taxes.
The partnership wants to raise $25 million in
private donations and so far has come up with
$11 million. Using that money and another $100
million it hopes is allocated by Congress, it
wants to buy about 75,000 acres linking the
Alpine Lakes Wilderness north of Interstate 90
with the Mount Rainier area.
Several years ago, the federal government
tried exchanging land near Mount St. Helens
for timberland around I-90, but
environmentalists protested. The deal was
scaled back considerably, and
environmentalists and timber interests agreed
to collaborate to get both government and
private money to buy the land from timber
companies.
"Every bit of national forest land is
precious to the people of this state,"
Sonny O`Neal, Wenatchee National Forest
supervisor, said Wednesday at the signing
ceremony in Seattle. "Trading one piece
of land for another just doesn’t work
anymore." |
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