Jefferson County commissioners unanimously agreed to spend $285,000 on four projects to buy or preserve prime farm and wildlife habitat areas at its meeting last week.

Commissioners voted 3-0 on this year’s projects in the county’s Conservation Futures Program, which protects critical open space areas from development as well as negative and unwanted permanent impacts.

The proposals are:

• $110,000 for the purchase and restoration of the Upper Tarboo wetlands, a 14.5-acre project of rural residential and forested wetland parcels in the Tarboo Creek watershed. Officials said the acquisition will fill a gap in conversation ownership in the wetland and stream corridor.

A total of $128,500 had been sought for the project and the Northwest Watershed Institute, the sponsor of the proposal, has been looking at matching funds of $508,000 from the National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Program to complete the purchase.

• $74,649 for Quilcene Headwaters to Bay Preservation, which would provide additional funding for the purchase of a conservation easement on 79.95 acres along Jakeway Creek north of Quilcene Bay. A total of $118,351 was awarded to the project last year, which will protect farmland, forest, and wildlife habitat. 

Approximately $275,000 of matching funds would come from the Navy’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, along with a $57,000 cash donation. The project sponsor is Jefferson Land Trust.

• $52,138 for Arlandia, the purchase of a conservation easement on 27.7 acres that would protect a perennial tributary to Tarboo Creek and forested wildlife habitat. The applicant for the project, Jefferson Land Trust, said the landowners would provide proposed matching funds of $220,000; the value of the donated easement. The sponsors had sought $60,000 in Conservation Futures funding.

• $48,213 for the preservation of Ruby Ranch, two parcels of
60 acres in Beaver Valley. The sponsor of the project, Jefferson Land Trust, said the funding would put a conservation easement on the farmland. The funding follows a
$60,000 award from the county made in 2018. Other matching funds include $284,130 from the Navy’s REPI Program. 

-Eight applications for funding had been submitted this year, with the combined request totaling $381,362.

The proposals were reviewed by the county’s Conservation Futures Citizen Oversight Committee, which scored the projects and recommended funding levels.

The four other projects that did not receive funding were an operations-and-maintenance request of $5,000 for a 40.5-acre floodplain property along the Duckabush River; $50,000 for the acquisition of a conservation easement on
11.58 acres on the Hannan Farm on the east fork of Chimacum Creek; $10,000 in operations-and-maintenance funding for a 73-acre property in the Snow Creek Watershed; and $5,000 in operations-and-maintenance money for a 5-acre property along Chimacum Creek.

Sarah Spaeth, the director of conservation and strategic partnerships for Jefferson Land Trust, said officials had tough choices to make when deciding where the limited funding would go.

“There were more funds requested this year than were available,” she said.

“They are all really great projects,” Spaeth added, noting the proposals that had been recommended to receive funding.

“We wish we had more money,” added Lorna Smith, a member of the Conservation Futures Citizen Oversight Committee. “There’s an unending need.”

Peter Bahls, executive director of the Northwest Watershed Institute, told commissioners the scope of the Upper Tarboo proposal would be changed due to the loss of $18,000 in Conservation Futures funding that was sought.

A 1.2-acre parcel, one of three in the application, may be eliminated from the overall proposal.

Any change to the proposal, however, will eventually come back to county commissioners for approval.