$1.5M grant may be last piece of fund puzzle for Skyline Forest
Skyline Forest. Photo: Byron Dudley
An effort to create a 30,000-acre community forest west of Bend received a $1.5 million boost Monday, as the U.S. Forest Service announced a grant to the state that could help purchase Skyline Forest.
Skyline Forest is currently owned by Fidelity National Timber Resources.
But the company is hoping to develop homes on a small portion of the parcel and sell the rest to the Deschutes Land Trust for a community forest, and the Oregon House recently passed legislation that would allow the company to build 197 houses on 640 acres.
If a deal for the transfer comes together, Monday’s grant, when combined with another possible grant next year, and bonds from the Deschutes County Community Forest Authority, would take care of the funding, said Brad Chalfant, executive director of the Deschutes Land Trust.
“We’re excited, and we think we’re on the right track,” Chalfant said. “With the availability of Forest Legacy funding and the Community Forest Authority, it’s definitely viable at this point.”
Previous attempts to negotiate an agreement for the property have not been successful. In 2007 Fidelity proposed donating 28,000 acres to the land trust in return for the state’s permission to build between 500 and 1,000 homes on the remaining acres, and in 2008 the state tried to work out another deal involving three different tracts of land.
The Oregon grant for Skyline Forest is one of 24 nationwide under the Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program. The funds go to help protect forests that are at risk of being developed or changing ownership, said Kathryn Conant, program manager. This year, the Forest Service received $193 million in funding requests for 83 projects, she said.
The Skyline project made the cut, in part, because it adjoins the Deschutes National Forest, and so protecting it creates a continuous swath of forestland, Conant said. “We like to support projects that do have a connection with already-protected land,” she said.
While the grant goes directly to the Oregon Department of Forestry, the state agency will then use the money to buy a conservation easement from the Deschutes Land Trust if a deal is worked out between the land trust and Fidelity. And the land trust will put the $1.5 million toward buying the Skyline Forest.
Even more money could come to the Skyline project next year from the Forest Legacy Program, said Kevin Weeks with the Oregon Department of Forestry, as the state is on track get an additional $2.5 million in 2010, although it’s not yet final.
Chalfant said the grants would be used to help supplement loans that would come from the Community Forest Authority. The county-established entity can issue bonds, he said, then loan the money to the land trust, which would sell timber on the property to repay the loan. And the additional grant money could help reduce the amount of timber the land trust would need to cut to repay the bonds, he said.
“We don’t have to rely exclusively on timber revenues for the purchase of the property,” Chalfant said. “We don’t have to harvest it as hard.”
The grants also are a way to help keep Skyline Forest a working forest, Weeks said. “This creates another tool for the Deschutes Land Trust and the other partners that are working on the many-thousand-acre forestlands,” he said.
With details of the legislation still in flux as the Oregon Senate considers it, the land trust doesn’t know which acres might be included in a sale and how much the land will cost, he said.
And Fidelity representatives are still waiting to see if the Oregon Senate can come up with legislation that would make economic sense for the company, said Greg Lane, chief operating officer and executive vice president with Fidelity.
But if it does pencil out, he said, Fidelity’s intent is to sell much of the property at a discounted price to the land trust. “We’re actively engaged in the legislative process, and continue to talk to the (land) trust about how we can put all these pieces together to get the result we’ve been trying to achieve for a long time,” Lane said.
Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 541-617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.
