Forest plan needs friends

Bend Bulletin editorial on Skyline Forest.

If a proposal falls flat in Salem, does it make any noise in Bend? Not if it’s an incredible plan to preserve much of the Bull Springs Tree Farm, a 33,000-acre strip of privately owned forestland stretching between Bend and Sisters.

The property’s owner, Fidelity National Timber Resources, negotiated with the Oregon Department of Forestry this summer on a proposal that would have preserved 28,000 acres of the tract — and much, much more. But passing the necessary legislation would have been politically difficult, says State Forester Marvin Brown, so the governor’s office gave it the cold shoulder. Oregonians could come to regret this indifference.

What Fidelity wants is legislation allowing it to develop about 5,000 acres of the property, says the company’s chief operating officer Gregory Lane. Fidelity was asking for a total density of 1,000 homes over that area, says Lane, but probably would have built fewer. The property’s current forest-use zoning makes such intense development impossible. However, says Lane, the property can be “parcelized,” or divided into plots well in excess of 200 acres and sold off for hobby farm — or hobby forest — use.

In exchange for the right to develop 5,000 acres, Fidelity was prepared to donate the remaining 28,000 acres to the Deschutes Basin Land Trust, which would manage it as a community forest. But that’s not all. Fidelity also owns a good deal of forestland near Gilchrist, and the company was willing to sell about 100,000 acres to the state at essentially half price. The Department of Forestry, as Sunday’s editorial page noted, is proposing to buy roughly the same property at full price in order to create a new state forest. We support the current effort but regret the apparently lost opportunity to save a whole lot of public money.

Lane recognizes that the proposal was “very challenging politically.” And that’s the reason the governor’s office was less than enthusiastic, according to Brown. To allow the development of such a large chunk of forestland is an affront to the state’s land use laws to which various interest groups will object very strenuously. It’s not something to be done casually — or, if you’re the governor, without expending some political capital. We understand both why opponents don’t like it and why the governor doesn’t want to touch it.

But ignoring Fidelity’s offer is an affront to reality. Yes, 5,000 acres of forestland would have been developed. But the return on that sacrifice was immense: a free 28,000-acre forest right next to Bend, and a new state forest bought on the cheap.

The alternative to this proposal isn’t disastrous by any means. The state still may get its Gilchrist forest, though it’ll have to pay full fare. And even without special legal dispensation to develop a 5,000-acre planned unit development, the Deschutes Basin Land Trust could end up with a forest Fidelity’s Lane calls “substantial.” But it probably won’t be 28,000 acres. The company will simply develop in a large-lot, diffuse fashion rather than a small-lot, concentrated fashion, which will whittle away at the land available for donation. This isn’t the sort of outcome that thrills land-use purists, either.

The proposal may resurface at some point, says Lane, but he isn’t particularly hopeful: “I wouldn’t say it’s dead, dead, dead, but it’s pretty close.” Don’t count on the governor to reach for the paddles and yell, “Clear!” But given the benefits of the proposal — a cheaper state forest and a larger local forest — you’d think somebody would want to. Our Central Oregon legislative contingent, perhaps?