Land Buy on lower Clearwater

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/reg...n-the-coast.xml

Unfortunately the entire Clearwater River drainage is within State Trust Lands...so it has been mostly destroyed over the decades. One spit of rain and the river blows out, two days without rain and it is a trickle...maybe this will help some.

I wish it extended a lot further than just the flatlands on the lower river, but I hope to see some improvements over the next decades!

Fish on...

Todd

Nice.......Good luck,

SZ

Yes, it would be nice to see it extend further upstream, like into the Solleks.

That's good news!

By the signs in the yards, the locals there sure do like them some land grab!

I know this is a different process than the other, and I support both.

fb

The other one is pretty funny, actually, in some ways...

Usually enviros seek to have regulations so stiff that timber companies can't even log on their own land...so the owners complain that if you are going to regulate my land so badly you should just have to buy it!

In the other plan that's exactly what they did...and not surprisingly, it's still a land grab, even when they buy it.

Why don't the timber companies buy it, then, if they want to log it?

Why? Because Capitalist Captains of Industry that they are...they like Socialism just fine when they benefit from it. They'd rather log public land and take the money instead of pay for the land and log it...even when the USFS is losing money on the deals.

That's Socialism.

Fish on...

Todd

Sounds like a win for the fish.

I'm not familiar with the Clearwater but have to wonder if there will be any effect on angler access to the water. I know on the Skagit I have been asked to leave Nature Conservative lands several times.

Curt

The bank access on the lower river is paltry at best already...except for a couple of very small areas it is all a boat show down there anyway.

Fish on...

Todd

I just wish they would let me hunt their property in the Beezly Hills. I've tried contacting them dozens of times and just get the run around. The last e-mail I sent I told them I'd send $1,000 with my application to join and still never got word back. Frustrating. Especially since they allow motorcycles without written permission.

I really do support them but in their efforts to improve Sage grouse habitat you'd think they like someone like me shooting all the pheasant and quail. But noooooooooooo.

Not real sure how this well will help salmon but I guess it could keep elk and loggers off the river banks so it should help a little. Baby steps I suppose.

You guys really think this will matter to the fish? Going from current rules to no harvest wont mean much really. Trees along the river are going to grow either way. FFR buffers vs no harvest means what?

A century long outlook is nice. TNC will have a better stand of timber and forest on their land than DNR, which will manage most of the basin on a 60 year rotation or thereabouts. But I don't think the salmon will notice it much. Clearwater hydrology and water quality is driven more by what happens on upstream DNR lands than on the lower end ITT Rayonier section.

Sg

So what do you think the upstream hydrology impacts are then? Seems like a lot of you have not been keeping current on the literature. I first worked on the Clearwater trapping smolts in 1982, and I am very familiar with that system. It is a rain dominated system flowing into a glacial system. Everyone expect it to behave like the Queets hydrology-wise? Seems to be recovering reasonably well from the Bert Cole era, given the DNR HCP management regime.

Milt,

No, I don't expect the CW to behave at all hydrologically like the Queets. I expect it to improve much from the Bert Cole effects, but it will never fully recover while managed as a state tree farm, even under Fish & Forests IMO. The upstream impacts will continue to be lower summer lows and higher winter peaks. But those would be expected to improve slightly under F&F, except that climate change may counter-act those changes with warmer drier summers and warmer wetter winters, if it goes as predicted.

Sg

Good luck. They bought 50,000 acres of land where I used to hunt in Montana and then closed it completely down for hunting. Well not completely down. They allow well connected bigwigs to hunt, just not the peons. I no longer give them money for just that reason. We are paying for playgrounds of the rich and famous. Not that they do bad, but it just rubbed me wrong that my donations were being used to lock me out and allow the "in crowd" in.