Deal for state forest finalized

By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin

Published: February 11. 2010 4:00AM PST

The state of Oregon will buy 43,000 acres of ponderosa pine forests just east of Gilchrist to create the first new state forest in more than 60 years.

The Board of Forestry approved the $14.7 million purchase from Fidelity National Timber Resources at its meeting Wednesday.

“They were interested in getting out of those lands, and we were interested in keeping them as forests,” said Doug Decker, state forest project leader with the Oregon Department of Forestry. “Under today’s existing land use program, those lands, the lands we’re acquiring, could be subdivided into dozens, if not hundreds, of individual parcels.”

One of the Department of Forestry’s priorities is preventing the development of forestlands, he said, to help protect things such as fish and wildlife habitat, water quality and public access for recreation.

The money for the purchase comes from a $15 million bond approved by the 2009 Legislature, and will be repaid by lottery funds over the next 20 years, he said.

Oregon is working with the Conservation Fund, a Virginia-based nonprofit, which plans to buy an adjacent parcel and possibly sell it to the state in the future.

The land the state is buying was owned by the Gilchrist Timber Co. starting in the early 1900s, Decker said, and was considered a model of ponderosa pine forest management until the early 1990s, when it was bought by Crown Pacific. That company heavily logged much of the forest, he said. Crown Pacific went out of business in 2003, and Fidelity bought the property in 2006.

“The vast majority of these lands, you’re not going to find trees older than about 20 years,” Decker said.

The state plans to manage the Gilchrist forest as a working forest, cutting timber, but it could take decades for the forest to get to that point.  Recreation opportunities also will be developed in the coming years, he said, noting that people already use the forest for hunting, driving off-highway vehicles and picking mushrooms.  “It’s going to be a neat resource for Central Oregon,” Decker said.