Columbia Land Trust

1351 Officers' Row, Vancouver, Washington 98661
360.696.0131 voice, 360.696.1847 fax

In Our View: Friday, November 7, 2003 Quiet Victory Island purchase could save rare deer We've become so accustomed to environmental progress being achieved through lawsuits and legislative wrangling, it's a pleasant shock when it happens via handshake. So it is with news that a Columbia River island, roughly halfway between Clark County and the Pacific Ocean, will soon become home to the endangered Columbia white-tailed deer. Crims Island, east of Cathlamet, is one of the few remaining large islands in the river that has not been radically altered by dredging. The Vancouver-based Columbia Land Trust purchased about 450 acres of the 600-acre island -- just days before they were to go on the auction block -- using a $427,000 grant from the Bonneville Power Administration. In addition to protecting and restoring the island's juvenile salmon habitat, the trust will work to transfer ownership of the island to the nearby Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge, where about 700 Columbia white-tailed deer now live. The additional acreage won't, by itself, return the creature to its former abundance; tens of thousands of the unusual ungulates once populated the lower Columbia as well as southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley. But as federal wildlife biologist Al Clark told The Associated Press this week, the addition of Crims Island to the refuge could help get the deer off the federal endangered species list. Not every environmental victory comes as harmoniously as this one. But when they do, they're all the more sweet. Web editor for Opinion is Michael Zuzel.

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