Land deal adds acreage to wilderness Conservation group brokers transfer
of private property to Forest Service By Alex Breitler, Record Searchlight Redding, California
January 24, 2005
TRINITY ALPS WILDERNESS AREA - Grand granite
peaks and sparkling emerald lakes helped this rugged region
earn federal protection as a wilderness area three decades
ago.
But unbeknownst to many visitors, a few small
pockets of private land remain hidden in these mountains,
raising concerns that logging or development might yet pockmark
the otherwise scenic surroundings.
In recent weeks, officials completed a roughly
$3 million deal that transfers to the public 1,360 acres of
land in the Trinities and the Marble Mountain Wilderness to
the north. Ownership shifted from a timber company to a Colorado-based
conservation group and ultimately to the U.S. Forest Service.
It took 25 years of bargaining to reach an
agreement. And even then it took another four years for the
deal to be completed.
But the acreage -- composed of two parcels
in the Trinities and a third in the Marbles -- now belongs
to the people. One of the parcels is dotted by lakes and cut
across by the Pacific Crest Trail.
Preserving wilderness is one of the top goals
of the Forest Service, so the agency scoops up as many private
in-holdings as it can, said Harry Frey, a land specialist
on the Klamath National Forest.
"We try to do that with due diligence,"
he said.
For most wilderness lands, the rules are rigid:
No development, no road building, no vehicle access.
But many private lands within wilderness areas
date to the 19th century, long before protections were established.
Owners of these properties have the same rights with their
land as they would anywhere else.
"We have no say as to what they do with
their property," Frey said. "They could log it.
They could build a ski lodge."
And the Forest Service would be "almost
obligated" to allow roads to be built through the wilderness
to access the private in-holdings, he said.
In this case, timber company Siller Brothers
Inc. and the Forest Service had negotiated the sale for decades,
but long clashed over the value, Frey said.
The situation changed when the company, which
has an office in Anderson, decided to reconsolidate its holdings,
Frey said.
Enter Wilderness Land Trust, a group with the
sole purpose of buying private wilderness lands from willing
sellers, and transferring them to the public.
After a year of negotiation, the trust purchased
Siller's land. It took two more years before the Forest Service
could muster enough money from timber receipts to acquire
the land from the trust.
The Carbondale, Colo.-based trust paid for
the deal with a loan from a source that asked to remain anonymous,
said the trust's president, Reid Haughey. The source will
be paid back with the money from the Forest Service, he said.
Using a third party like the wilderness trust
often helps transfers move along faster, Haughey said.
"If it were simple to sell land to the
United States, we wouldn't have a purpose," he said.
Siller Brothers' owners could not be reached
for comment Friday.
It's not the first time the wilderness trust
has facilitated a deal in the north state. Trinity County
conservationist Joseph Bower recalls when the trust helped
transfer to the public 160 acres of land in the Yolla-Bolly
Wilderness, preventing helicopter logging that had been planned
there.
"I think it's a good idea," said
Bower, who lives south of Hayfork and belongs to the local
group Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment. "The
Alps draw a lot of people. It's a big recreational area. I
think this is how the public will be best served."
Much of the north state forestland was a public
and private checkerboard after the railroads sold off many
parcels in the 1860s, Frey said.
Those old railroad lands include one of the
parcels in this latest deal. That land in the northeast Trinities
was again sold in the 1950s to a Scott Valley resident and
then turned over to Siller Brothers about 25 years later,
Frey said.
Though conservationists were praising the land
transfer, eight or nine other private wilderness in-holdings
exist on the Klamath forest alone, Frey said. Many are small
homesteads owned by the same families for generations and
are unlikely to be sold to the government.
Siller's former lands, on the other hand, contained
a valuable resource -- 12 million to 13 million board-feet
of timber. That's enough to build more than 1,200 homes.
Harvesting of these trees was the greatest
concern motivating the transfer, Haughey said.
The newly public land is made up of 640 acres
in the northeast Trinities encompassing Telephone Lake, 80
acres in the Big Flat area of the Trinities and 640 acres
just south of the Sky High Lakes in the Marbles.
With the latest deal complete, the land trust
has now transferred 1,600 acres of Trinity land to the public;
2,576 acres remain private. That's a tiny chunk of the wilderness's
overall bulk, 500,000-plus acres.
Although there are no immediate plans to transfer
additional lands in the Trinities or elsewhere in the north
state, Haughey wasn't ruling it out.
"We're always trying to acquire more,"
he said.
Reporter Alex Breitler can
be reached at 225-8344 or at abreitler@redding.com.
Editorial, Record Searchlight
Land purchases keep wilderness
in proper state
January 26, 2005
They amount to only a few thousand acres within
the vast wilds of northwestern California, but the private
parcels in the Trinity Alps and Marble Mountains areas that
the Forest Service recently purchased will go far toward ensuring
the long-term integrity of our wilderness.
The stray in-holdings are the remnant of 19th-century
federal policies that encouraged settlers to develop the West
by doling out public lands. Those laws worked well enough
-- we have 36 million Californians and counting -- that Congress
eventually passed the Wilderness Act to keep every last acre
from being plowed and paved. That U-turn created some messy
maps, with islands of private land whose owners retain the
rights to build, mine or log dotting the seas of public wilderness
meant to be preserved in its natural state for the ages.
Not everyone places the same value on wilderness,
and there are fair arguments to be had over the degree to
which public lands should be put to productive use or preserved
for prosperity. The areas that Congress has already set aside,
however, deserve the best possible protection.
Federal wilderness exists as a set-aside for
nature and a get-away for humans. Chain saws and jeep engines
inevitably break the spell and make the designation a meaningless
bureaucratic label.
The Forest Service had long pursued the parcels,
and it took decades of negotiating over the price, $3 million
and timely brokering by the Colorado-based Wilderness Land
Trust to make the deal happen.
Thirty years is a long time to spend haggling,
but the redoubled protection for the Trinity Alps and Marble
Mountain wilderness areas is timeless.
