Oregon Public Broadcasting

Over the last few decades, land exchanges have become a popular tool.

It's a way  for government agencies and private landowners to acquire property they want, but can't afford.

The U.S. Forest Service and a Portland-based timber company are considering a large trade in Idaho. It would put nearly 40,000 acres of highly-valued forest in public hands.

In exchange, the company would get dozens of smaller parcels around Idaho.

Some say it's a good deal. But opponents lament what the public would lose. Inland Northwest Correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

The mountains that make up the spine between Idaho and Montana include  majestic forestland that rivals any in the West. One of those areas is the headwaters of the Upper Lochsa River.

Teresa Trulock: "So that's the Idaho Panhandle map."

Teresa Trulock and I are sitting at a picnic table at a highway rest stop in north Idaho. Trulock works for the Forest Service. She's laying out maps to explain the Upper Lochsa land exchange.

Teresa Trulock: "The Upper Lochsa land is approximately 40,000 acres of what's called checkerboard timber land. The checkerboard pattern is what's left over from the railroad company days when that land was given to the railroads to build a coast-to-coast railroad."

For years, the railroad and its Plum Creek Timber Company logged their pieces of the checkerboard. Then in 2005, Plum Creek sold the land to Portland-based Western Pacific Timber.

The other pieces of the checkerboard are owned by the Forest Service. But Trulock says it's hard to manage land when it's fragmented like that. She says the Forest Service has tried for years to buy the other squares.

Teresa Trulock: "In an attempt to be able to manage the Upper Lochsa ground in a holistic, ecosystem approach."

Trulock says the area is an important spawning ground for endangered salmon species. In the past, it's also been a prime elk hunting spot, says Ron Marcoux of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Ron Marcoux: "We believe that the opportunity for management on a larger scale would be a great opportunity to increase those herds again."

Forest Service officials say Western Pacific Timber doesn't want to sell its Upper Lochsa parcels. Instead, it wants to trade them for other land in Idaho.

So Trulock says the agency has pulled together 28,000 acres of federal land spread throughout north Idaho.

Teresa Trulock: "A lot of that acreage would be parcels that are remote for us to access that are small, isolated pieces of ground that are hard for us to manage."

Western Pacific Timber hasn't announced what it would do with those parcels. It could log them or sell them to other timber companies. Or it could develop them. Company officials didn't return our calls.

But the idea of trading away public land for private use has generated opposition to the transaction.

Kathy Judson from Friends of the Palouse Ranger District sorts through maps that show the parcels of land involved in the Upper Lochsa land exchange.

At the same rest area where we met Teresa Trulock with her maps, Kathy Judson pulls out her own.

Kathy Judson: "These are the predominant areas that are getting shish kabobbed."

Judson is a member of a group that calls itself the Friends of the Palouse Ranger District. She's brought with her 10 people who live next to some of the parcels that would be traded.

Retired Forest Service employer John Krebbs says he and his neighbors like the access they have now and want to keep it that way.

John Krebbs: "They go out daily and use this national forest land. And they camp on it and there's a tremendous amount of investment made on the public's behalf made on all of these lands. We are not opposed to acquiring the lands up in the Upper Lochsa, but not at the expense of these lands down here. There's no equitable way to compensate for what's been done down here."

Krebbs says the group wants to kill the land exchange. In nearby Moscow, the county commissioners have also come out against the trade.

Teresa Trulock from the Forest Service believes it will go forward anyway, although, after all the opposition, she says the agency may reduce the amount of land it swaps.

The Forest Service had hoped to take the proposed deal to the public for comment this fall. Now that won't happen until spring.

Online:

The proposed Upper Lochsa land exchange