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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
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Huge land swap OK'd

But bitter feelings linger among those who opposed Huckleberry exchange

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

By ROBERT MCCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A massive and bitterly contested Western Washington land exchange between the U.S. Forest Service
and the Weyerhaeuser Co. has finally been completed, but not before it helped spark a national re-
examination of such land swaps.

Environmentalists were split on the so-called Huckleberry Land Exchange. Those who for years fought
the deal remain opposed. But they said they could not afford to battle the giant timber company in court
when it filed a lawsuit designed to force them to back down.

"They're a multibillion-dollar corporation and we're a non-profit group, and that, unfortunately, is the
way things work," said Janine Blaeloch of the Western Land Exchange Project.

A Weyerhaeuser spokeswoman who said she had no information about the land swap when it was
announced by the Forest Service yesterday afternoon could not be reached for comment later in the day
about the environmentalists' charges.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly cleared the way for the completion of the exchange Thursday,
completing a deal begun in the early '90s. In the final version, Weyerhaeuser gave up about 30,000 acres
scattered from near Index in southern Snohomish County to just northeast and west of Mount Rainier
National Park in southern Pierce County.

In exchange, Weyerhaeuser at first got 4,300 acres about 15 miles east of Enumclaw. Eventually,
however, court challenges and the possibility of continued litigation helped persuade the company to sell
back 700 acres to the government for almost $6 million, the Forest Service said.

The 700 acres includes some old-growth land and the old Divide Trail, which ancestors of the
Muckleshoot Indians used to cross the Cascades between modern-day Enumclaw and Yakima.

The deal was praised by the Forest Service and by some environmentalists, including the Sierra Club.
They said it helps reconnect in public ownership corridors of natural land that will someday allow
animals to move freely through the Cascade Mountains.

Elk, salmon, spotted owls and other wildlife will benefit, proponents said.

"The impact of this is long-term habitat sustainability for fish and wildlife, which is the big reason we
wanted to consummate this exchange," said Ron DeHart, a Forest Service spokesman.

Sierra Club negotiator Charlie Raines said, "From the Sierra Club's point of view, it was worthwhile
doing earlier, and now it's even better, because we don't have to give up as much."

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Critics, however, had contended that although the Forest Service said both sets of land were worth about
$45 million, a more realistic appraisal pegged the value of Weyerhaeuser's land at $35 million. Critics
also pointed out that most of the land Weyerhaeuser was trading away had already been logged or was
high-elevation "rocks and ice." In exchange, the company got thousands of acres of mature forests.

"They created a nice connectivity between a bunch of clearcuts," Blaeloch said. "In 200 years, it's all
going to be green on the map, but right now, it's clearcuts. We are trading away habitat for clearcuts, and
with all the species that are on the edge, it's imprudent."

The Forest Service's DeHart acknowledged that much of the real estate conveyed by Weyerhaeuser had
been cut.

"Trees grow up," he said. "This is a pretty big chunk of ground. The agency's point of view on this is
that it's a long-term benefit."

The need for the exchange stems from an unwieldy checkerboard pattern of land ownership that resulted
from the 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant, which conveyed huge amounts of federal lands to railroads
in exchange for their helping to open the West to settlement. Every other square mile of land was given
to the railroads for huge swaths alongside their routes.

Today, timber companies own much of that land. The federal government wants to get the land back,
because a never-ending series of clearcuts every other square mile is bound to shred the mountain lands
needed by animals to survive, the government says.

The Huckleberry Exchange, so named because some of the old forests Weyerhaeuser received in the
deal are on Huckleberry Mountain near Enumclaw, was initially opposed by several environmental
groups and the Muckleshoot Tribe.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described itself as "troubled" by the original deal in 1999 and told
the Forest Service to reconsider the land swap. After a reconfigured exchange was outlined, Zilly issued
an injunction forbidding Weyerhaeuser to log the land.

Last summer, Weyerhaeuser sued Blaeloch's group and the Pilchuck Audubon Society to block further
legal action against the exchange, said Blaeloch and David Gladstone, a board member of Pilchuck
Audubon. The company agreed to drop the suit in exchange for their pledge to decide by Oct. 26
whether to pursue further legal action, Blaeloch and Gladstone said.

Blaeloch's small Seattle-based group pulled out of negotiations with Weyerhaeuser. But Pilchuck
Audubon persevered. In coming weeks, the timber company and the Everett-based environmental group
will announce something else "positive for the environment" that resulted from the talks, Gladstone said.

The Muckleshoots separately worked out a deal to settle the suit. Its terms have not been revealed to the
environmental groups, Blaeloch and Gladstone said.

The Huckleberry Exchange was among those cited in a July 2000 report by the non-partisan General
Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which found "serious, substantive and continuing
problems" with land exchanges between the government and private companies, most of them in the
timber and mining industries.

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P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com

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