Land swap to exclude Watch Mountain

By Allan Brettman The Daily News

A heavily forested mountain next to Randle, Wash. has been officially pulled from a land exchange, U.S.
Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., announced Wednesday.

Gorton said the trade had been renegotiated to remove Watch Mountain, a tract with old-growth trees that
overlooks Randle. Residents had feared the land would be clearcut, presenting a landslide hazard.

The U.S. Forest Service was the last of a diverse group of negotiators to agree to the revised agreement.
The agency signed off on the deal Wednesday afternoon. Negotiators on the revised I-90 Land Exchange
included Gorton, Sen. Patty Murray, Plum Creek Timber Co., the Forest Service and eight environmental
organizations.

A statement issued by the group credited Gorton and Murray for bringing the negotiators together to arrive
at an agreement.In addition to protecting Watch Mountain, the agreement drops old-growth tracts on Fossil
Creek, a four-square mile area in the southwest corner of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

The deal also removes public lands in the Green River area, where Plum Creek scientists discovered
endangered marbled murrelets. That discovery this summer sent the deal back to Congress, months after
President Clinton had signed it into law.The agreement culminates nearly a year of twists and turns in what
has been billed as the largest private-public land swap since the end of World War II.

Proponents say this land swap is designed to erase the 1800s-era "checkerboard" pattern of public and
private lands that makes individual parcels difficult to manage along the I-90 corridor in the Central
Cascade Range. The agreement will result in a swap of 31,700 acres of Plum Creek land in the Wenatchee
and Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forests for 10,400 acres of USFS land in three national forests:
Wenatchee, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie, and the Gifford Pinchot.

The parties found two other key areas of agreement:

They agreed on a process to allow the federal government to acquire approximately 18,000 additional acres
of Plum Creek land previously slated for exchange into public ownership.

They agreed to forsake future litigation over either the land exchange or Plum Creek's future access across
Forest Service lands to some of its Cascade property.

The revised exchange protects large ecosystems that contain important habitat for fish and wildlife and also
preserves recreational benefits for Washington citizens, the pact's negotiators said in a joint statement.The
exchange has a net increase in public ownership of 8,000 acres of old growth forests and 20,000 acres of
roadless lands. It also adds over 25 miles of popular hiking trails into public ownership as well as
protecting some of the state's most scenic areas such as Silver Creek, Cooper Lake, Kelly Butte, and the
West Fork of the Teanaway River.

Charlie Raines, director of The Sierra Club's Cascade Checkerboard Project, said, "The parties found
common ground in protecting roadless areas, ancient forest, and salmon-bearing streams."

Another environmental group, the Cascadia Defense Network, set up tree-sitting stands on Watch Mountain
and in the Fossil Creek forest to protest their inclusion in the trade.

Cascadia organizer Sarah Vekasi said, "The people in Randle are elated. It's just an example that through
direct action we can change Congress. It's amazing."