PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson Land Trust is seeking a new executive director in the midst of a bevy of staff shifts and new partnerships for the 26-year-old conservation organization.
Current Executive Director Sarah Spaeth will remain with the land trust to work full time on large-farm and forestland projects as director of conservation and strategic partnerships, said Steve Moore, president of the land trust board of directors.
The organization hopes to hire a new executive director by July, Moore said.
Chris Clark, formerly the development director at Conservation Northwest in Seattle, has been hired as development director, Moore said.
The trust’s headquarters, located at 1033 Lawrence St. in Port Townsend, is under renovation to make space for new conservation programs and an expanded staff.
Donations have come from Wallyworks, Carl’s Building Supply, Peninsula Flooring and MD Design.
In 2014, the land trust was awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant from Satterberg Foundation of Seattle to assist in adding staff members and new land to protect.
“The Satterberg Foundation’s three-year support for strategic conservation recognized the enormous potential of these large projects to the community and the need for full-time staff support,” said Ann Baier, land trust deputy director.
Preserving farmland
The land trust has played a role in permanently preserving more than 650 acres of farmland in Chimacum, Quilcene and Discovery Bay, and stewards or preserves from development more than 10,000 acres.
That’s a growth of 14 times the area it protected in 2005, land trust officials said.
The land trust also holds stewardship of more than 7,500 acres owned by the city of Port Townsend, Jefferson County, Hoh River Trust and other partners.
New land trust projects are under discussion with partners including the Trust for Public Land, Ecotrust Forest Management, the state Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, Jefferson County and private landowners.
Proposed projects include an 860-acre working community forest in the vicinity of Chimacum, 500 acres of farmland in East Jefferson County, a river corridor across the Olympic Mountains, a farm incubator and housing options on Chimacum Creek.
“These large projects involve more people, but they rely on the same types of community donations, partnerships and creative land-protection methods we have been using for over 25 years,” Spaeth said.
The trust works toward the conservation of multiple types of land use, including that intended for ecological, recreational, historical and agricultural purposes.
One of the land trust’s earliest projects was the Quimper Wildlife Corridor, designed to preserve habitat connectivity and a hiking and biking trail system along the Port Townsend city storm drainage path.
The land trust also assisted in the protection of about 70 acres of tidelands at the head of Discovery Bay, now owned by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, one of multiple organizations preserving hundreds of acres in the Discovery Bay watershed.
Agricultural lands
Land trust support for the agricultural community and economy has included the protection of Red Dog Farm, Finnriver Farm, Boulton Farm, Glendale Farm, Sunfield Farm, SpringRain Farm, Compass Rose Farm and the Brown Dairy.
Longtime farmer John Boulton of Boulton Farm is one of those in agriculture who has worked with the land trust to protect the future of his farmland.
“I realized that putting legal restrictions on the use of the land would work only if there were a watchdog to assure the protections were honored in the future,” Boulton said.
The protections offered by the land trust allow farmers to know their farms will remain as farmland long after their deaths.
“My husband’s family has been farming in Washington for five generations, and the working lands efforts of Jefferson Land Trust give us hope that our boys and other youth of this county will indeed have farmland to work if they so choose,” said Crystie Kisler of Finnriver Farm.
The Jefferson Land Trust is one of 285 land trusts accredited by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, a program designed to ensure permanence in American land conservation.
One in six land trusts in the U.S. is recognized by the commission.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
