TRUCKEE – Conservationist groups and Sierra Pacific Industries have reached a first-of-its-kind agreement that protects wet meadows and wildlife habitat in the headwaters of the Little Truckee River.

A conservation easement on 7,085 acres near Jackson Meadows Reservoir in Sierra County will permanently limit development along Henness Pass Road while allowing recreation and selective logging in the mixed conifer forest.

The deal announced last month is the first conservation transaction negotiated with Sierra Pacific, an Anderson-based timber company and the state's largest private land holder.

Truckee Donner Land Trust worked with the Trust for Public Land, a national conservation organization, to set the terms of the agreement and raise $3.25 million to purchase the development rights from Sierra Pacific, said Perry Norris, executive director of the land trust based in Truckee.

"It is a giant step forward for conservation that Sierra Pacific worked with a local and regional land trust on a conservation easement," he said.

For the timber company, which previously dropped plans to rezone the property for development, the deal is an opportunity for public education as well as new partnerships, said Mark Pawlicki, a Sierra Pacific spokesman.

"They saw a unique value for recreation without further development, and we can still harvest timber on our land," he said.

The agreement halts further development along Henness Pass Road, where the numerous existing homes include one with a helicopter pad.

"That development was like an arrow pointing into the heart of the Little Truckee River and the Middle Yuba River watersheds," said David Sutton, Trust for Public Land director for Northern California and Nevada.

Sutton and others have spent years working to consolidate management of lands in the region where historic ownership has created a checkerboard of private and public lands. In addition to protecting critical migration corridors in an area where wolverines have recently been seen, the easement is strategically located to help conserve key watersheds and river corridors.

"Without it, we could jeopardize the resource values of the entire region," Sutton said.

The Henness Road conservation easement makes a total of nearly 40,000 acres of land that has been protected in the 200,000-acre Sierra checkerboard area, which stretches from Lake Tahoe north to Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The Truckee Donner Land Trust bought the conservation easement with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Board and the Nature Conservancy. It allows public access for hiking, snowmobiling, hunting and bird watching, and gives the land trust the right to build public trails.

Selective and dispersed logging will continue to send timber to Sierra Pacific sawmills, enhancing local economies, Norris said.

The newly protected acreage was part of a Sierra Pacific plan in 2007 to rezone about 40,000 acres in eight Northern California counties from forests to designations that would eventually allow housing and commercial development. Company officials applied to remove the widely dispersed lands from timber production zoning, starting a 10-year countdown that would have ended their tax benefits but allowed rezoning to new designations that permit development.

A lawsuit filed by High Sierra Rural Alliance stalled the rezoning of the 7,085 acres in Sierra County, eventually launching the negotiations that resulted in the recent conservation agreement. In Lassen County, Sierra Pacific withdrew its zone change following settlement of a similar legal challenge over 5,500 acres of timberland.

The company is proceeding with rezoning on 6,339 acres in Tehama and Shasta counties but has withdrawn its requests in Butte, Plumas, Siskiyou and Trinity counties, Pawlicki said.

Sierra Pacific is open to other opportunities to protect the natural resources on its 1.9 million forested acres, he said.

"Lots of unique areas with different values exist on our land. We're always willing to look at various opportunities," said Pawlicki.

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