HONORING THE LAND: TRUSTS GAIN POPULARITY IN CONSERVATION EFFORT

Sunday, May 19, 2002
By ERIK ROBINSON, Columbian staff writer

Lyle, Washington -- Bill Giersch gazed up the Klickitat County canyon he knows so well.

    After a quarter-century working in the sun, deep lines crinkled around his eyes as Giersch considered the future of this 580-acre parcel he once owned together with his late wife. Located in the Columbia River Gorge, a half-hour east of Hood River, Ore., expensive homes have already sprouted up nearby.

    Now, with no children to take over his cattle-ranching business, Giersch couldn't bear to sell it for development as a subdivision.

    "You develop a concern for the land," he said, "and you care about it."

    That's why Giersch, like a rapidly growing number of other Southwest Washington landowners, turned to the Vancouver-based Columbia Land Trust. By placing a permanent conservation easement on the property, then selling it to the land trust at a reduced price, Giersch believes he's honored the land and the memory of his wife, Mary Kreps.

    Land trusts have become a much bigger player in conservation efforts over the past few years, especially in the Northwest. Almost 70 land trusts have emerged and prospered by tantalizing landowners with tax breaks, a lasting legacy for their land and a conservation ethic that spans political and ideological divides.

The numbers tell the story.

    Over the past four years, the amount of land placed in permanent conservation in six Northwest states has increased 63 percent to 885,000 acres, according to the Land Trust Alliance, a national advocacy group.

    In just the past three years, Vancouver's Columbia Land Trust has gone from 424 acres conserved to 3,200 acres of open space, view points and trail access. Once run by volunteers, the 12-year-old organization now employs nine people, with headquarters on Vancouver's Officers Row and a new office in Astoria, Ore.

    In 2000, the last year figures were available, the land trust generated $1.7 million in total income through public and private grants, major donors and funds generated from a membership of more than 1,000. The Paul. G. Allen Forest Protection Foundation is by far the trust's biggest donor since 2000, contributing $2.15 million.

    Director Glenn Lamb attributed the rise to land trusts' ability to embrace environmentalism in a way that's not threatening to private landowners.

    "People are sick and tired of the negativism of regulation," he said recently. "I have found that landowners are very interested in taking positive action for conservation, and they can also qualify for tax benefits in doing this."

Held in trust

    Land trusts operate like any other trust, structured to defend a landowner's wishes forever.

    For Giersch and his one-time neighbor Mike Jennings, who recently donated a conservation easement on 350 acres along the Little Klickitat River to Columbia Land Trust, the trust offered peace of mind.

    Landowners essentially have variations of three options: donate their land, sell it, or place a conservation easement on it.

    Jennings donated an easement only, while Giersch included an easement in the sale to the trust. In both cases, the organization has clear orders that dictate future use of the properties.

    Jennings, an ecologist by training, bought his property in 1975 for the chance to farm and run a small cow-calf operation. By the late 1980s, Jennings knew he would have to invest another $250,000 in new equipment to keep his farm going money he couldn't justify for the meager financial return. He moved to Idaho to work for the U.S. Geological Survey, but kept the Klickitat County property.

    Meanwhile, as road improvements cut the travel time to Portland, Jennings watched a neighboring ranch sold for homesites. Jennings believes retirees, attracted to the beauty of the gorge and the relative proximity to Portland, will transform the area from rural to suburban.

    "The handwriting's on the wall," he said. "The value of that kind of property is very low value for anything else. It doesn't work for farming and ranching."

Tax breaks

    By restricting future use of the property, landowners theoretically lose market value when they try to sell it.

    But the federal government already offers tax incentives to encourage conservation, and a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would go further, exempting half the gain from selling land with a conservation easement.

    At an annual estimated cost to the U.S. Treasury of $66 million, however, some wonder about the wisdom of Portman's legislation.

    Keith Ashdown, spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the best argument against the tax break is the fact that more private land than ever is being conserved already. There's no need for a new tax break, he said.

    "It may have the best of intentions," Ashdown said. "But it's still not worth the taxpayers' expense to subsidize something that is already working in the marketplace."

    In Jennings' case, designating most of the land as open space did not hurt its market value. Instead of slicing the property into multiple homesites, Jennings said he quickly realized buyers were willing to pay a premium for open space. Jennings said four willing buyers stepped forward the first day he offered the property, all willing to pay his asking price.

    "The easement enhanced the value of the property," he said.

    In agriculture-dependent Klickitat County, with a median household income of $34,267, the possibility of selling off large tracts of bucolic countryside for big bucks is enticing to many ranchers.

'Gone forever'

    It took Giersch almost two years, from the time he met with Columbia Land Trust until the purchase was signed, to reach an agreement over future use of the property. The agreement allows the land to be grazed for the next 40 years with as many as 70 head of livestock. Though cattle can denude soil by overgrazing and muddying creeks, Giersch's operation limits livestock to only a couple of hardened crossings through Dillacort Creek.

    At 62 years of age, with no children to take over the ranch, Giersch wanted to find a way to keep the land much as it was when his wife's family homesteaded more than a century ago.

    Giersch, a former high school teacher, doesn't want his land locked away and insisted on a clause in the sale agreement allowing grazing. He sold the property to the trust for $300,000 -- about $200,000 less than the trust believes Giersch could have received on the open market.

    Whatever harm to the environment caused by cattle ranching, it doesn't hold a candle to the long-term degradation caused by a permanent subdivision of asphalt and rooftops, said Ian Sinks, the land trust's conservation director.

    "Once it's developed, it is gone forever," Sinks said. "We can find more common ground with landowners and farmers and loggers than we can with developers."

    The deal secures a permanent home to spawning steelhead and habitat for migratory birds and wildlife. Slow-growing Oregon white oaks are riddled with cavities that provide prime nesting and foraging habitat for birds, and acorns feed a rich web of life that encompasses insects, snails and rattlesnakes.

Strategic conservation

    Lamb, a former collegiate long-distance runner who previously served as a Clark County parks planner, became the land trust's first paid director in 1999.

    Even though the amount of land conserved by the trust has shot up dramatically in recent years to 3,200 acres, it remains a relatively small proportion of the total landscape along the lower Columbia River. But they're an important 3,200 acres, Lamb said.

    "We're being very strategic about where we do our work," he said.

    Lamb estimates the organization turns down as many as a quarter of all the landowners who call with an offer.

    Drawing on the expertise of dozens of public and private conservation agencies, the land trust carefully targets its investments. How important is it for fish and wildlife? Is it likely to be lost or damaged unless the organization intervenes? Do local land-use ordinances adequately protect it?

    Land trust employees have cultivated a network of contacts up and down the Columbia, tipping them off to landowners open to conservation.

    "We don't do our work by coming in and telling people what they should or shouldn't do," Lamb said. "So we need to spend our time listening to people."

Urban oasis

    The organization's ability to hold land in perpetuity attracts many landowners, including Vancouver native Mary Wood.

    At first glance, Wood shares little in common with Giersch, the Klickitat County rancher.

    Wood is a law professor at the University of Oregon, a staunch environmentalist who supports such issues as dam breaching and protection of old-growth forests. Wood loves her family's property in the midst of a huge urban population just the same as Giersch loves his ranch in rural Klickitat County.

    Holding an aerial photograph of the property a mile east of the Interstate 205 Bridge, Wood can see the future -- and it isn't pretty.

    "This is what conservation deals prevent," Mary Wood said. The photo clearly shows a dense housing development crowded up against the Columbia just to the east of the Wood family property.

    During the past year, Wood has worked with the Columbia Land Trust, the city of Vancouver and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to find a way to preserve her family's legacy.

    Wood believes the site's location near the Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center on the nearby Evergreen Highway, along with a natural preserve named for her great-grandfather, Henry J. Biddle, makes the 15-acre site a natural for research, environmental education and use by conservation and tribal groups.

    "It's one of the last remaining sites in the urban area that still has its shoreline in its aboriginal condition," she said.

    Natural springs burbling out of the shoreline have attracted hundreds of spawning chum salmon the past couple of autumns.

    "When they're here, the springs are just alive," Wood said. "They're hopping with salmon."

    The area includes two parcels owned by the Wood family, along with a third owned by a family estate and a fourth recently purchased by local resident Bill Maitland.

    The Wood family wants to put conservation easements on two of their three parcels, and sell the third to Columbia Land Trust or the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to manage as a prime spawning site for chum salmon. Wood hopes to raise money through private fund raising or a grant to purchase the fourth parcel from Maitland.

    Through a mix of land donation, purchase and conservation easements, Wood said she believes the land trust is the best way to protect the natural environment.

    "Government agencies are too slow and too cumbersome to do that," she said. "Land trusts put property into, literally, permanent conservation status. Regulations are only as strong as the enforcement behind them -- and the political will behind them."

    Erik Robinson covers environmental issues for The Columbian. 
He can be reached at 360-759-8014, or by e-mail at erik.robinson@columbian.com.