The city of Everett, which owns 3,729 acres at its reservoir at Chaplain Lake, north of Sultan, has proposed a novel approach to land management that would set aside about a third of the property for wildlife habitat for several decades while allowing the city to continue a modest program of timber harvest elsewhere on its property.
Spada Lake provides about three-quarters of Everett’s water, but Chaplain Lake is an important link in the city’s water system. Like the lands that surround Spada, which are managed by the state Department of Natural Resources, the Snohomish County PUD and the U.S. Forest Service, the property around Chaplain Lake is managed chiefly to protect that watershed. Taking precautions to protect water quality, Everett has logged portions of the property in the past, usually 10 to 20 acres at a time, and wants to continue to do so.
The city, like other owners of forestland, faces uncertainly in its use for timber production because of the need to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, both listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. And the very actions to protect habitat can make it difficult to get permits for logging if the habitat attracts those species.
The relatively new Safe Harbor Agreements, in use by private forestland owners but not by a municipality before, are a cousin of conservation easements, which provide considerations to landowners in return for giving up development rights to the land. As reported Monday by Herald Writer Chris Winters, Everett wants to use a Safe Harbor Agreement, coordinated by the state DNR, the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to set aside 1,066 acres, about a third of its property at Chaplain Lake, for the next 50 years. In preserving the habitat, if the property were to attract owls or murrelets, the city could continue harvest elsewhere around Chaplain Lake as long as it follows a management plan that provides a net conservation benefit to the birds, which includes leaving snag trees that the birds use for nesting, longer harvest rotations of 60 years and reforestation after logging.
While it has become clear in recent years that nonnative barred owls are a factor in the decline of northern spotted owls, habitat protection will remain important to protect spotted owls and murrelets and prevent other species from falling into the status of threatened or endangered.
Before the state and federal agencies can issue permits for the agreement, a 30-day public comment period has begun. Documents related to the application can be reviewed at tinyurl.com/ USFWChaplainSHA. Comments can be emailed until June 4 to WFWOComments@fws.gov.
This and other Safe Harbor agreements should be studied as they progress to evaluate how well they encourage forestland owners to practice conservation measures that protect wildlife habitat while still allowing landowners the ability to manage forestlands for resource production.
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