Partnering with Private Landowners

TO EXTEND THE IMPACT OF THE CASCADE-SISKIYOU NATIONAL MONUMENT

President Clinton proclaimed the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (CSNM) in June 2000 as the nation’s first such dedicated to protecting biodiversity. At the time, just over 52,000 of the 86,774 acres covered in the proclamation were officially protected and included in the monument. The remaining land was considered part of the CSNM planning area. These lands were privately owned and unaffected by the designation, meaning the area’s natural wealth was at risk due to the extent of fragmentation in ownership.

Since 2009, we’ve worked with a number of private landowners to acquire and protect key portions of these lands, conveying them to the Bureau of Land Management and officially adding them to the monument. The CSNM has increased by 20% through such efforts, but there’s still more to do, both inside and outside of the planning area.

With the lapse of the primary funding source for expansion, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, securing protection of additional land within the CSNM planning area has become more difficult. Fortunately, there are other effective ways to continue conserving the area, extending protection beyond those borders. We’re currently working with the Parsons family to conserve their 2,065 acre forest, providing an essential connection for wildlife between the CSNM and the Rogue River National Forest.

This project and others like it are essential to protect key wildlife corridors to safe habitats between the CSNM and nearby Forest Service lands. In addition to connecting corridors, many species, like the vulnerable Pacific fisher, need more habitat than what the checker-boarded landscape of public lands provides. Protecting this region’s globally outstanding biodiversity needs many tools, and private conservation efforts like Mountcrest provide a complement to overall CSNM biodiversity protection.

Learn more about the Mountcrest project and others like it.