Goal 3 is to develop a residential neighborhood on the western part of the property. If that goal can be achieved, the sale of residential lots should generate a profit to cover development costs and to help set aside the remaining eastern acreage for long-term restoration and maintenance of oak savannah environment.
The remaining goals are largely contingent on Goal 3. Most funding that is available for wildlife habitat preservation, endangered species protection, noxious weed control, experimental burning, trail maintenance, and education is based on the need for long-term commitment of resources (ten to 100 years) in order to qualify. The landowner has made it clear that, for reasonable economical concerns, the creation of a long-term easement for wildlife habitat and other purposes is almost entirely contingent on first obtaining residential development rights for the remainder of the property.
Short term funding for this project has been largely committed. Logging overstory conifer was profitable. Leave trees and shrubs have been identified, thinned, and cleared of basal and ladder fuels; logging and tree release debris have been salvaged for firewood or piled by hand and machine for future burning; remaining areas of the land have been seeded with native forbs and grasses and planted with native bulbs; areas damaged by logging and road-building have been mechanically repaired and planted; the public access trail has been roughed in; plans for weeding Brachypodium and poisonoak have been approved and undertaken. Everything has been authorized and paid for entirely by the landowner to this point,
Should a long-term easement be granted for the eastern portion of the property, funding needs and sources for mid-term and long-term completion of tasks associated with Goals 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 should be addressed immediately. In the interim, informal contacts and periodic updates can be made with key individuals. Other sources of income or management assistance can be provided by fundraisers by special interest group members of the community (e.g., bluebird habitat), work parties (e.g., trail maintenance), camas bakes (e.g., native bulbs planting and weeding), and snake hunts (e.g., wildlife inventories).
The current situation can be summarized by portions of an email response to me by Bruce Campbell on March 22, 2005:
. . .
Once
applications have been scored, ranked and we learn what our
funding is going to be for the application cycle, money is allocated to
grant
applications starting with the highest ranking one and continuing down
the
ranking list until monies are exhausted. Before any money can actually
be
spent, federal regulations such as the National Environmental Act,
Section 7 of
the Endangered Species Act, and State Historic Preservation Act must be
met.
Once federal regulation compliance is complete, grant contracts between
the
USFWS and ODFW and ODFW and the grantee are completed. Work and
reimbursement
for cost can then start. Typically, unless federal regulation
compliance
becomes more involved, this whole process from submission of the grant
application to project funding takes about 12 - 18 month. If compliance
with
federal regulations is more involved, such as the need for and
Environmental
Assessment or a Section 7 formal consultation, then the process can
become much
longer. A more detailed explanation of LIP, definition of at-risk
species, the
grant application evaluation criteria, and examples of successful
applications
can be found on our webpage: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/LIP/ .
Application
for an LIP grant does not ensure that the landowner
will receive a grant. competition for funding is stiff. For example, in
the
last funding cycle 39 landowners applied for nearly $4 million worth of
grant
money. At present, based on what Congress appropriated for this funding
cycle,
it appears the maximum funding allowed to any one successfully
competing state
will be about $950,000. This will fund only the top 6-7 scoring
applications.
Some of the goals identified in your e-mail below appear to be appropriate for the LIP. Specifically, goals 1,2, 4, and 6. Development into home sites and streets landscaped with native vegetation (goal 3) would not be proactive management of habitat to benefit at-risk species and would not be appropriate for LIP. In fact, while I can't speak for the independent ranking and advisory team, I can tell you from experience with them that any proposal tied with development would likely not score well. Goal 5, construction of a public trail system, also seems not to be in alignment with proactive habitat management. Again, I speculate that a proposal with this goal would not score very well. As you pointed out, goals 7 and 8 are more appropriate for funding by the Healthy Forest Initiative. I'm not aware of any current state programs that would provide funding for goals 7 & 8. Some funding for noxious weed control [Goal 6] is, or has been, available from the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture. Information on these programs may be available on their webpage: http://egov.oregon.gov/ODA/.
Bruce Campbell is author of
"Restoring Rare Native Habitats in the