Ecologists score another victory on Whidbey
© 1999-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
January 4, 2001
By DAVID FISHER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
WHIDBEY ISLAND -- Ebey's Prairie hasn't changed much in the past 150 years, except for its farmers and the way they farm it.
Its black fields still roll toward the high bluffs of Admiralty Inlet. The Olympic Mountains still gleam behind the rooftops of Port Townsend, 11 miles across the water. Neat hedgerows still mark the boundaries of original settlers' land claims.
The scene could remain unchanged for another 150 years and more. But the federal government may have to own a farm to keep it that way.
In a complicated $2.9 million deal engineered through the Trust for Public Lands, the National Park Service put the finishing touches on a deal to permanently protect Len and Bob Engle's 414-acre dairy operation from development, the trust announced yesterday.
The Park Service, through its local Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, will end up owning 191 acres outright, including the farm's core dairy barns and equipment.
The Engles will retain ownership of another 110 acres, but have sold the development rights to the Park Service.
The Trust for Public Lands will sell the rest of the farm after development rights on it are sold to the Park Service.
From a preservationist's standpoint, it's a masterstroke that caps a series of major coups on Whidbey Island.
The Historical Reserve now owns or controls development rights on about 9 percent of the reserve's 17,000-acre territory.
Two local benefactors, Fran and Joy Einterz, snapped up another 114 acres last year before real estate agents could sell it for development, and the Nature Conservancy ended up with control of several hundred more key acres after eccentric Seattle resident Robert Pratt died in 1999, ordering that his land be preserved.
The 520-acre Greenbank Farm, a rural landmark 10 miles south of Coupeville, was bought by the Port of Coupeville, Island County and the Nature Conservancy in 1998, and a group devoted to environmental studies bought the state Fish and Wildlife Department's 120-acre game farm a few miles south of Ebey's Prairie in 1999.
Locking up Ebey's Prairie is considered particularly important to the region, said Stephanie Taylor, project manager for the Trust for Public Lands. That's because the prairie is a microcosm of factors that are unique to the Northwest -- rich seaside farmland coupled with stunningly wild views.
"I can't think of an area I've been to where all those unique aspects exist in such a small space," she said.
Ever since local residents pressured it to form the National Historical Reserve in 1977 as a way to curb urban sprawl, the Park Service has used some delicate tools to balance human activity on the prairie with open space.
Until now, the reserve has relied solely on development easements to get what it wants. Under an easement arrangement, the reserve buys development rights on a parcel, but leaves the underlying ownership in private hands -- an arrangement that lets farmers continue to farm, while profiting somewhat from the desirability of their land.
The new deal with the Engles marks the first time the reserve has taken full ownership of a farm.
The move was forced, reserve manager Rob Harbour said, because creditors were threatening to carve developments out of some of the bankrupt operation's heavily leveraged fields to pay their debts.
That, in turn, forced the reserve to come up with enough cash to buy ownership along with easements to make a deal that could work for the farmers and creditors alike.
But it has also posed an interesting question: How will a federal agency manage a struggling dairy farm?
The land will be leased to the Engles at least through next growing season, Harbour said. After that, the lease will go to the highest bidder.
The reserve might also try to build it into a model farm, with help from the American Farmland Trust, to help show Western Washington farmers how to add value to dairy products, and how to deal with environmental problems, Harbour said. Or the underlying land might be sold someday to a private farmer again.
Some are dubious.
Jeanne Brown, a cousin of the Engle brothers and a descendant of William B. Engle, who first sank a plow into the prairie in 1852, owns about 80 acres on the prairie with her brother. They lease it to neighboring dairy farmers, but with tough prices in the past few years, most farms have cut back.
The reserve, she said, isn't willing to pay enough to buy permanent development rights from most owners, and she's not sure it knows what it's doing with a farm business.
"I know they want it in open land, but what are they going to do with it when it's just a field of weeds?" she said.
Cash for the Park Service's easement purchases comes from the federal government's Land and Water Conservation Fund, a pot of cash partly filled by environmental fines.
Harbour figures it would take another $8 million to lock up all the development rights worth having on the prairie.
"If we get that over the next five years, we'd have a reserve we wouldn't have to worry about," he said. "It would be an incredible showpiece."
To some, it already is.
Oblique winter sunlight played across the tips of the Olympics yesterday while Bryce Devos, a retired oral surgeon from Oak Harbor, folded a paraglider after an attempt to ride the icy wind.
"We have a beautiful country," he said, "if people would just stop doing nasty things to it."