Eleventh-hour land buy keeps Rock Creek acres in public hands

Just hours before access to a large part of its grant funding would have expired, 2,675 acres in the Rock Creek area were preserved this week as state wildlife land.

A collaborative effort of private and public interests -- with The Nature Conservancy and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation providing much of the legwork to obtain $3.27 million in grant funding -- completed the purchase of nearly four square miles of ecologically rich forest.

The land, acquired by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife from timber industry giant Plum Creek, begins about two miles east and northeast of Cliffdell, which is on State Route 410.

The purchase is the first of what is expected to be a three-part campaign to bring more than 10,000 acres of land along the southern edge of Kittitas County into public ownership, preventing it from being parceled into development lots and thereby ensuring its future as wildlife habitat.

The entire area has been in checkerboard ownership between the U.S. Forest Service and Plum Creek, creating what wildlife department regional director Jeff Tayer called "a very difficult management scenario, because (ownership) changes every mile."

The two additional transactions, each spaced about a year apart, will cost about $4 million. About three-quarters of that money has already been generated, said Betsy Bloomfield, The Nature Conservancy's forest director for Eastern Washington, noting it will take that time to "go through another round of public funding applications."

The $3.27 million for Monday's transaction came from two grants -- $1.8 million in state money from the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program and $1.47 million from a federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fund designed to protect habitat for endangered species.

The state grant would have expired Tuesday, the end of the fiscal year, had the transaction not been completed, Bloomfield said.

The Rock Creek purchase is crossed by several streams and is prime territory for large wildlife (elk, mule deer and bighorn sheep), fish and birds, including the federally protected northern spotted owl.

Although the area will remain in checkerboard ownership between the state wildlife and federal forest agencies even after the remaining purchases, "It's all public," Tayer said.

"And we have a collaborative agreement with the Forest Service, the Department of Natural Resources, the Yakama Indian Nation and The Nature Conservancy to collectively manage these checkerboard ownerships."

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