The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

This spring, the Deschutes Basin Land Trust (DBLT) will move forward on the Metolius Basin Project.

On April 17, 2002, the Land Trust announced that Willamette Industries had offered it an option to purchase 1,240 acres of the forest land on Lake Creek. DBLT met its Friday, July 25, deadline to purchase the land.

The purchase required a Herculean fund-raising effort that targeted $3 million for the purchase and for restoration and management of the property on this principal tributary of the Metolius River.

The acquisition is part of the Land Trust's "Back to Home Waters" campaign intended to restore salmon and steelhead to the Upper Deschutes River Basin.

"We're pretty excited. It's a neat piece of property and it's a huge opportunity for the community and all of Central Oregon," said DBLT Executive Director Brad Chalfant. "Of course restoring 1,240 acres and keeping it open to the public is not an inexpensive proposition.

"That's a big chunk of undertaking for a relatively young organization."

This land acquisition was the DBLT's first capital campaign and a benchmark for the organization. When Willamette contacted the Land Trust right before they were taken over by Weyerhaeuser, Chalfant said, "Our eyes got very big. We knew this was an opportunity we couldn't pass up."

The Land Trust has completed the first phase of the campaign, which was acquiring the property.

"Because of the terms of the contract we essentially had 18 months to raise the dollars to complete the purchase and we very quickly put together a budget, which included not only the purchase but also dollars to do the restoration and manage the property," Chalfant explained.

"We've hired Integrated Resource Management and they're going to be writing the forestry management plan for the Land Trust," said Chalfant. "We should have the plan in place by late spring."

To do the actual restoration work on the site the Land Trust is looking to contract several groups, one of those being the Heart of Oregon Corps, which utilizes youth volunteers.

The Cascade Bird Conservancy is doing a survey of birds using the site.

The main focus for managing the Preserve is fish, according to Chalfant. Historically, Oregon only had two Sockeye Salmon runs: the Grand Ronde and the Metolius.

"We're trying to preserve the genetic diversity that comes with those wild runs," Chalfant told The Nugget.

"We have an opportunity to bring these big red fish (Sockeye) back up to relatively small streams. It's the sort of thing that very few people have seen in communities like this where most of the people didn't grow up here and don't remember a time when these fish were here. If you haven't seen huge fish like these coming back you don't know the full story about these places."

Chalfant noted "the first rule of conservation biology: You build from your best habitat. Historically, before the canopy was removed from this property, this was probably the wettest, lushest area of all the tributaries to the Metolius."

The land contains streams fed by underground springs that create some of the moistest habitat on this side of the Cascade mountain range.

This is also prime elk habitat and a stopover site for tropical birds migrating from Latin America to Alaska.

"It's a remarkable and incredible place," said Chalfant. The Metolius is arguably the most pristine river in the entire West.

"So this becomes a place where we hope to start telling the story of Central Oregon ecology to visitors."