Families come to take a dip in the cool, clear waters of Shackleton Falls, a small swimming hole just outside the Klamath National Forest. The waterfall sits on private land, where a new conservation easement permanently protects the surrounding forest from future development.
The easement completes the Siskiyou Land Trust's largest conservation project, permanently protecting 40,000 acres of working forest in Siskiyou County. The restrictions prevent the land from being subdivided while allowing sustainable timber harvesting, wildfire mitigation and wildlife habitat conservation to continue across a landscape roughly the size of Washington, D.C.
"It's putting restrictions on the property so that it can't turn into a big subdivision in the future or be sold to a bunch of different landowners," said Alexis Robertson, co-executive director of the Siskiyou Land Trust. "It has to remain one large, intact piece of property in perpetuity, which is forever."
Conservation easements allow organizations, such as the Siskiyou Land Trust, to protect large swaths of land without purchasing them outright. Instead, landowners are paid for giving up certain development rights while retaining ownership. According to the owner of the final 12,214-acre property, the payment amounted to about 20% to 30% of the land's value.
Portland-based investment firm EMF bought the land in 2017. The company manages forestland through sustainable timber harvesting and carbon storage projects. CEO Bettina von Hagen said getting rid of the development rights on the property is a win-win.
“One of the most important things you can do from a forest perspective is to maintain the integrity of the forest and reduce fragmentation,” she said. “The minute you start getting development in forests, you significantly increase fire risk, and you significantly decrease the ability to fight fire effectively.”
The protected land lies between the wilderness and the nearby towns of Fort Jones and Etna. Robertson said a big part of conserving this land is to help prevent wildfires from threatening the towns.
“There's a shaded fuel break that goes right behind the town of Etna," Robertson said. "That was really instrumental in preventing the Shelly fire from affecting the town a couple years ago."
She said fuel reduction work and other forest management will still occur in this protected area.
The forest also helps to provide habitat connectivity for wildlife, including elk, in what Robertson said was an area with high biodiversity.
With this acquisition, the land trust has scaled up its work.
“We're not just working on small individual parcels,” she said. “We're really looking holistically at the entire county, and when we are able to look at that larger context, then it makes the conservation more durable and more effective.”
The land trust has now protected about 50,000 acres in Siskiyou County and aims to double that by 2030.
JPR Reporter Peyton Gast contributed to this story.
