In addition to preventing all development, the easement protects water quality and important fish and wildlife habitat, provides public recreational access to the popular McCloud Falls and Pacific Coast Trail – all while promoting sustainable forest management. Bascom Pacific’s conserved forests will remain in private stewardship and productive use, thereby providing jobs to the local community and quality timber products to consumers.

“Bascom Pacific is demonstrating that forestry and conservation, private ventures and public values are complimentary, not contradictory,” notes PFT Managing Director Constance Best. “The great challenge of protecting California’s private forests in the face of burgeoning development requires more partnerships like this one, now, before the landscape loses its economic and ecological vitality from further forest loss and fragmentation.”

Funding for the $7.3 million acquisition and associated costs of the McCloud Project came from a consortium of public and private sources united by a desire to set a precedent for conserving California’s working forests. The state Wildlife Conservation Board’s contribution of $5.6 million was matched by grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation ($1 million through their Wal-Mart-sponsored Acres for America program) and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund ($800,000).

Bascom Pacific’s property is located within the remarkably rich Klamath-Cascade region where the conifer forests rate among the most biodiverse in the world. The mixed conifer forests, oak and aspen stands, varied meadows and numerous trout streams on the property support more than 250 species of birds, fish and mammals including special-status species such as the northern spotted owl, bald eagle, Pacific fisher and the imperiled redband trout.

Specific terms in the easement provide added safeguards for water quality that will protect flows from these forests to the faucets of more than 20 million Californians through the Sacramento system. Further, the McCloud Project easement links critical habit across 2.1 million acres of the surrounding Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Preventing development and ensuring model forest management here will also enhance the forest’s long-term ability to store carbon, in turn providing Californian’s with increased climate benefits.

This project, and WFCEs in general, represent an innovative new model for saving working forest landscapes. In return for their commitment to conservation and high standards of stewardship, private forest landowners are financially rewarded. Working forest conservation easements are a good investment for the public, too, as they protect valuable resources at a fraction of the cost of buying a property outright – in this case half as much. Plus, because Bascom Pacific and PFT will share stewardship responsibilities, government does not have to bear the financial burden of managing the property in perpetuity.