Skyline Forest changes hands

The Deschutes Land Trust has been working for years to acquire the vast tract of private forestlands to the southeast of Sisters known as Skyline Forest. Now DLT will be talking to a new owner.

Fidelity National Financial announced last week the closing of the sale of all of the assets of Cascade Timberlands, LLC to Singapore-based Whitefish Cascade Forest Resources, LLC. Cascade Timberlands is comprised of approximately 197,000 acres of timberland in Klamath and Deschutes counties. Fidelity reported that they received a total cash distribution of approximately $63 million from Cascade at closing.

DLT Executive Director Brad Chalfant told The Nugget that the sale won't negatively affect the land trust's efforts to conserve the forest between Sisters and Bend.

"I don't see it as a negative," he said. "Nothing's really changed other than that we're going to be talking to somebody different - and hopefully more responsive."

As far back as 2007, Fidelity was offering the possibility that DLT would be able to acquire and preserve 28,000 acres of their 33,000-acre parcel as a community forest. But negotiations never really got off the ground. Nor did legislation that would have allowed some intensive development of a portion of the property.

Chalfant told The Nugget that intense community interest in preserving the forest might have led Fidelity to think that DLT would "pay a king's ransom" for the property, but that was never in the cards.

Legally and ethically, "we can only pay what something is worth," Chalfant said.

In most cases, DLT only announces their efforts to acquire a specific property when a deal is done. Many times, those deals take years and considerable negotiation to come to fruition.

"Skyline was so big and so complicated that we felt we had to announce early," he said.

That gave the public a peek behind the curtain at how these kinds of land acquisitions roll out. If they roll out.

"It ain't pretty and it certainly isn't fast," Chalfant said. "It only happens when a landowner is ready."

Chalfant is hopeful that the new owners will be ready, and receptive to working with the land trust.

"We'll be contacting them in the near future," he said.

There is an incentive to work with DLT. Development of the property is not an easy hill to climb, as has been demonstrated by years of false starts.

"The pathway to breaking it up and developing it, while possible, is arduous," Chalfant said.

So, with new ownership, the forest that sweeps across the high ground between Sisters and Bend may yet wind up being a community forest.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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