Bonners Ferry, Idaho – A 647-acre conservation easement will protect important north Idaho grizzly bear habitat as well as working forests and rural jobs, The Nature Conservancy and Forest Capital Partners announced today.
The conservation easement will protect lands owned by Forest Capital Partners in the Boundary Creek area, located 15 miles north of Bonners Ferry near the Canada border. The forest will continue to be owned and managed by the private forest management company.
The property is frequently used by grizzly bears and other wildlife including moose, elk and deer. It also contributes to an important wildlife corridor between the Selkirk and Purcell mountains.
"This easement is important to conserving North Idaho’s grizzly bears, while also maintaining the rural economy through active forest management," says Robyn Miller, the Conservancy’s Inland Northwest conservation manager. "Forest Capital Partners deserves a huge thanks for their commitment to both people and wildlife."
As part of the easement, the company will not harvest timber during months when grizzlies use the area. The easement also will create and maintain forest buffers along streams and roads to improve fish and wildlife habitat.
Because the property is adjacent to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Boundary Creek and Smith Creek Wildlife Management Areas and national forest land, it expands the fish and wildlife benefits these lands already provide, and keeps these protected areas connected. Boundary Creek, a beautiful mountain stream containing healthy populations of redband and bull trout, runs through it.
The easement prohibits any building or subdivision on the property in perpetuity. Forest management will occur under a forest management plan specified by the easement.
A grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to support protection for ecologically important lands helped make this project possible. The easement acquisition also was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered Species Recovery Land Acquisition program to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. This is the first time this program has supported a grizzly bear habitat project.
The grant is the second Recovery Land Acquisition grant requested and received by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit us on the Web at nature.org.
Weekly news, notes and stories from The Nature Conservancy of Idaho at http://www.idahonaturenotes.blogspot.com/
Forest Capital Partners is a private landowner, financial manager and steward of large-scale working forests across North America. Forest Capital actively manages more than 1.9 million acres of forests under sustainable forest management guidelines set forth by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® and is a leading grower of environmentally certified timber products and active participant in non-timber forest markets.
Visit http://www.forestcap.com/ for additional information.
