State negotiating to buy large parcels of Central Oregon forest

The deal, which may include partners, would aim to stem land’s development

SALEM — The state is in negotiations to purchase, potentially along with partners including the Klamath Tribes or conservation groups, blocks of private forestland in Central Oregon once owned and managed by Crown Pacific Partners.

Among the targeted properties is a roughly 90,000-acre swath known as the Mazama parcel, which straddles U.S. Highway 97 in Klamath County, south of Gilchrist, state officials confirmed.

Department of Forestry officials offered scant details Tuesday because the price and other factors are still being hammered out, and the state has yet to determine the income streams to finance it, said Dan Postrel, the agency’s communications manager.

The chief motivation, forestry officials say, is to keep large tracts of forestland from being broken up and sold for development. The land would likely eventually be managed as a working forest.

The Crown Pacific lands, now owned by Fidelity National Financial Inc., have been largely logged over, and there is little likelihood that they could support profitable forestry in the near future, said state Rep. Chuck Burley, R-Bend, a forester and timber industry consultant who has been briefed on the potential purchase.

“It is a pretty good idea, what they are looking at doing, but the devil is in the details and there are still a lot of questions, such as where the money will come from,” he said.

He said his preference is that private lands be maintained as forests and remain in private hands, but if there is a risk of the land being turned into subdivisions and resorts, then public ownership is a better alternative.

He said a 33,000-acre parcel west of Bend, known as the Skyline Forest, also could be part of the mix.

That property has been mentioned as a potential candidate to become the state’s first community forest authority, which allows for low-cost government loans to help buy and maintain working forests.

Fidelity, which owns that land, has offered to sell much of the land but wants to potentially develop 5,000 acres.

State officials would not confirm any other sites but the Mazama parcel are part of the negotiations, however.

More than half of Oregon is owned by public entities, the biggest landowner of which is the federal government.

The state’s forest-related holdings are concentrated in the Coast Range. The 27,000-acre Sun Pass Forest in Klamath County is the only state forest on the east side of Oregon.

Postrel said the management philosophy would be similar for the newly identified land if the state is able to acquire new forestland — at least, once the largely lodgepole pine landscape recovers from aggressive logging.

“Those lands are not in exactly fully stocked condition, and it will be some time before any revenue would come off them,” Postrel said. “That’s one of a million complications.”

There is no clear-cutting in the Sun Pass Forest.

The state sells trees for selective harvests from between 1,000 and 1,200 acres a year, yielding between 6 million and 9 million board feet of timber. Klamath County gets about $1 million a year as a result, the agency said.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski has suggested that the state acquire new forests and use the proceeds to benefit higher education.

Rumors of a potential deal have been circulating — and the first public confirmation came Tuesday when state officials said during a joint meeting with commissioners in Tillamook and Clatsop counties that a move is afoot to expand state forest holdings,

One possibility is officials could tap some of the state’s share of proceeds from logging on the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests in northwest Oregon to pay for the additional land.

Also, part of the land could be bought in partnership with conservancy groups, Postrel said, or owners might retain and develop chunks of the vast tracts.

“Probably small parts of them would be retained for development purposes,” he said. “The idea is to let the landowner realize the return on these relatively small parts.”

Portland-based Crown Pacific filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003, citing more than $500 million in debt.

Officials said more details about the potential purchase would become available next week.