Unique ecosystem earns protection

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, June 21, 2007

LONG BEACH – The bizarre ecosystem in Long Beach’s Island Lake Forest is safe from development, thanks to a deal struck between a family of longtime cranberry farmers and a Columbia region conservation group.

The 359-acre property is an anomaly, scientists say, because old growth Douglas fir and Sitka spruce trees, which prefer drier climates, sprout from sand dunes in an area doused by more than 80 inches of rain each year.

This habitat – acquired May 31 by Columbia Land Trust – gives refuge to herons, eagles, osprey, bears, elk, river otters and woodpeckers, said Glenn Lamb, the conservation group’s executive director. Some scientists believe the forest could be home to the federally endangered marbled murrelets, seabirds that look like a duck crossed with a penguin.

Lamb would not disclose how much the group paid for the property, but it was purchased at “less than its appraised value,” he said. “The family was very conservation-minded.”

The land had belonged to Long Beach resident Frank Glenn IV’s family since 1940, and Glenn said the idea of selling the land to a logging company broke his heart. He started visiting the area as a teenager.

“It seemed a very peaceful place with some of the largest trees I’ve seen on the Peninsula,” said Glenn, 32. “This place is special. It’s wild, and it’s unspoiled.”

But as the cranberry market became more difficult, Glenn – a fourth-generation cranberry farmer who owns and operates Cranguyma Farms with his father – said selling seemed like the only way to compensate for money lost on the farm.

His family had considered selling the property for the past 16 years, but Glenn was able to keep it in the family’s hands. But the continued downturn in the cranberry market made a sale inevitable.

In 2000, the cost of cranberries fell to 10 cents per pound, but it cost 30 cents per pound to produce the berries, he said.

“It just left all cranberry farmers desperate to find a solution,” Glenn said. “I thought there was another way. I worked to find a conservation organization.”

The Conservation Land Trust was interested in the property’s unique habitat and the property’s effects on the Long Beach community, Lamb said.

The freshwater bodies on Island Lake Forest supply the Peninsula’s soil with the potable water used by about two-thirds of Long Beach residents, Lamb said. That fresh water also is crucial to running the Peninsula’s oyster and cranberry industries, he added.

“If these lakes are drained, we could lose the integrity of this freshwater aquifer,” Lamb said.

The Island Lake Forest property is not an island. The forest, located on the Long Beach Peninsula north of Cranberry Road, is named for Island Lake, which is adjacent to the forest.

Lamb said there are plans to use the forest for scientific research and the group will consider making parts of the property public, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the ecosystem.

The Columbia Land Trust is a private nonprofit that conserves land in the Columbia River region – from the Cascade mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Funded through grants and donations, the group has purchased more than 800 acres of land in the Peninsula and bay areas.

“Our mission is to conserve these great places,” Lamb said. “The most important benefit is to the people and the wildlife of this region.”