For the week of June 25 - July 1, 2003

Land Trust helps augment Big Wood protection

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By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer

Expanding protection of the floodplain along the Big Wood River in Bellevue, the Wood River Land Trust Friday, June 20, helped orchestrate a new one-acre easement along the river, immediately adjacent to other protected lands west of Bellevue.

"The marsh grasses are up to your armpits, it’s so lush down here," said Tom Blanchard of Lower Broadford Road, who together with his wife Florence donated the riverfront property to the City of Bellevue.

The city and the Land Trust are near to completing the acquisition of the 12-and-a-half-acre Howard Property that together with other city-owned property will total over 18 acres of riverside preserve.

Several other conserved properties are up and down the river from the Blanchard’s land, said Land Trust Executive Director Scott Boettger. "The effort it took to lose the (riparian) corridor to development and landscaping is the same effort it takes to get it back together."

After a tour of the property, Land Trust board president Jim Marron accompanied Boettger and the Blanchards to Bellevue City Hall to have signatures for the conservation easement notarized.

In addition to ecological conservation of wildlife habitat for moose, elk, river otter, amphibians like the western toad, and an estimated 134 bird species, the easement that’s heavy on cottonwood and dogwood also extends a public access trail along the river.

The Blanchards’ management plan for the last 30 years has been to protect the natural habitat. Tom Blanchard boasts that they have the largest cottonwood tree in the valley, but says one of the drawbacks of not landscaping to the riverfront is that they recently lost six chickens to a raccoon.

Another benefit of protecting the natural landscape is to have a floodplain that absorbs energy from the river, said Blanchard.

"We are rip-rapped on either end," he said. "It’s like holding part of a snake still while the rest of it (bends and moves).

The next "target" for the Land Trust is to connect more strips of land between the city and the Howard property.

"Every little piece counts," said Boettger. "The goal is not to touch anything on this side of the fence – in perpetuity."

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