Mount Rainier gateway to be preserved

A historic, 142-acre estate teeming with mature trees and wildlife habitat near the Paradise entrance to Mount Rainier National Park will be permanently protected by the Nisqually Land Trust, the result of a $780,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Also announced Friday was a decision by the state Department of Natural Resources to place 230 acres of Tahoma State Forest near the national park into permanent conservation status.

The moves mark a significant step in a multi-year effort to ward off logging and development for the sake of fish and wildlife habitat on 4,500 acres of what's called the Mount Rainier Gateway Initiative. In 2006, the land trust and state Department of Natural Resources teamed to protect 800 acres of mature forest near the park entrance on a project that also preserves view corridors for tourists entering the park and corridors for wildlife to access the Nisqually River. More land conservation efforts are on the way, trust executive director Joe Kane said.

The trust also is near closure on the purchase of two smaller parcels near the 142-acre Allen Estate totalling 40 acres and remains in negotiations on another 900 acres, Kane said.

The forest protection measures save habitat for northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets, which are both listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

With the purchase of the Allen Estate, one-half mile on both sides of state Route 706 leading into the park remains a setting of mature Douglas fir trees towering over the road.

"The significance of the project is far reaching for all the partners involved," state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland said.

The Allen Estate was homesteaded in the 1890s by Yale University botany professor Oscar Allen. The estate also was the home of Grenville Allen, Mount Rainier National Park's first superintendent, and his brother, Edward, the first forest ranger in the Northwest.

The land trust stepped in to protect the land when the estate's California owners announced plans to log it in 2005.