State Trust Land Transfers
- Status: Protection Pending
- Location: 4 parcels, Whidbey Island
- Acreage: 140 acres
Public Benefits
Wildlife habitat and travel corridors, mature forest, and water quality
Description
Island County recently received four properties through 50-year leases; the parcels are at-risk state school trust lands totaling 140 acres. These leases do not permanently protect the land: once the leases expire, full ownership and management return to the Washington Department of Natural Resources. All four of these properties have critical wildlife habitat. Three of the four are located in South Whidbey. The fourth property, Swantown, is located outside of Oak Harbor and complements the habitat at the nearby Swantown wetlands and Joseph Whidbey State Park.
Click here to read the list and descriptions of the transferred properties.
Project Story
Unique Opportunity to Save Forest Land -- Forever
The Land Trust has a remarkable opportunity to protect 140 forested acres on Whidbey Island for $250,000 — that’s a cost of less than $2,100 per acre! To make this opportunity a reality, the Land Trust must raise the $250,000 from private donations.
The Washington Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and Island County recently signed 50-year, no-cost leases on the four properties as part of the state’s Trust Land Transfer (TLT) Program. The TLT program provides an opportunity to retain special school trust lands in public ownership while maintaining and improving the economic return to the school trust beneficiaries.
In 2003, the Land Trust started a campaign to have all the school trust lands in Island County transferred to protected status through the TLT program. At the time, the trust lands were on WDNR’s “disposal” list, meaning these properties were to be auctioned off, which likely would have resulted in the forests being cut and the land developed.
The Land Trust’s campaign has been incredibly successful. Since the campaign started, 13 of the 14 remaining properties, totaling 1,535 acres that include 3,700 feet of shoreline, have been protected from being sold into private ownership.
The last four properties were only leased, rather than sold to Island County. Although the properties will be protected for the next 50 years, their management will be problematic because of the lease terms. At the end of the leases, the properties will be returned to the WDNR and will again be at risk for clear-cutting and development. To protect these properties in another 50 years, we’d need to purchase them at their fair market value at that time — a cost that is likely to be cost-prohibitive.
Here’s how we want to protect this land now and forever. The Land Trust wants to buy them now at the “underlying” land value (the difference between the fair market value and the value of the leases), while the cost is low. The Land Trust is proposing that, in exchange for raising the money to purchase the underlying land, Island County convey conservation easements to the Land Trust.
The $250,000 campaign will cover the cost of buying the rest of the land from the state, all of the transaction costs, and funds for future stewardship. This is an incredible value for some amazing forest lands.
