Small Town News

Three-way land transfer protects Goldsborough Creek salmon

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Capitol Land Trust, Green Diamond Resource Co. and Forterra recently completed a three-way land transfer that conserves a 145-acre property in the upper reaches of Goldsborough Creek.

The property - in the Dayton area near Little Egypt Road provides critical habitat for several species of salmon, including steelhead, coho, Chinook and chum.

Capitol Land Trust reports it has been conserving property on Goldsborough Creek for more than 20 years, and with the completion of this transaction have conserved more than 3 miles of Goldsborough Creek mainstem shoreline.

Capitol Land Trust applied for and secured grant funding through the Salmon Recovery Funding Board program to buy the Goldsborough property from Green Diamond. Capitol Land Trust states that although the Squaxin Island Tribe contributed money to help with the acquisition, it needed an additional match for the grant, but couldn't find a source of additional funding.

In stepped Forterra, which offered to transfer to Green Diamond a 10-acre forested property along Decker Creek near Matlock that was donated to Forterra in 2012 by a donor who asked that the land be conserved or used to achieve conservation goals in the South Sound area.

The Decker Creek property is next to Green Diamond's working forest-land. The offer was made contingent on Green Diamond accepting the value of the Decker Creek property for the match.

"The Goldsborough project was several years in the making, and we are very excited to get it conserved," said Laurence Reeves, Capitol Land Trust conservation program manager, in a news release. "We are continually grateful for the support and funding of the Washington Salmon

Recovery Funding Board, as well as the other partners Forterra, the Squaxin Island Tribe and Green Diamond. We appreciate Forterra's and the tribe's willingness to assist financially in the conservation of this important project. This is a win for the environment, the community and all parties involved."

"Forterra is very pleased to have been able to assist in the conservation of this vital property," Forterra President Gene Duvernoy said in a news release. "Leveraging a small property to conserve more ecologically-valuable land is not only an exciting innovation for us, it helps advance the conservation and working timberland goals of our Olympia Agenda, a long-range vision and action plan for the peninsula's environment, economies and communities."

"This is an important example of the use of market forces to conserve habitat while still ensuring viable working forests here on the Olympic Peninsula," Eric Schallon, Green Diamond's manager of land management and business development, said in a news release. "We are delighted to partner with Capitol Land Trust and Forterra in efforts like these."



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