QUILCENE — The Northwest Watershed Institute has purchased 80 acres of forestland that will expand the Tarboo Wildlife Preserve and that is a step toward a joint conservation project to protect a total of 240 acres.

The final project will be a partnership with Jefferson Land Trust and Leopold-Freeman Forests LLC to protect wildlife habitat and provide sustainable forest management, said Peter Bahls, executive director of the Port Townsend-based watershed institute, also known as NWI.

The 80-acre parcel was sold last month to NWI by a Danish investment company, ANE Forests Inc., that had planned to clearcut the property and sell it for development, Bahls said.

The forest is adjacent to the 316-acre Tarboo Wildlife Preserve northeast of Quilcene.

Bahls said the $550,000 purchase would not have been possible without low- and no-interest loans from conservation investors.

“These people invested in our local community to benefit wildlife, the land and sustainable economies,” Bahls said.

Now, NWI seeks funding to pay off the loans to allow for permanent protection of the property.

“The purchase buys us time, but it doesn’t guarantee protection,” Bahls said.

“NWI needs to raise the funds over the next several years to pay off the loans and allow transfer of a conservation easement to the Jefferson Land Trust.”

Once conservation loans are repaid, the 80-acre forest parcel — one of the few remaining large tracts of older forest in the Tarboo valley — will be permanently preserved for wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration and sustainable, selective forestry as an addition to the Tarboo Wildlife Preserve, Bahls said.

If the 80-acre parcel is successfully funded and protected by NWI, Leopold-Freeman Forests LLC has agreed to donate a conservation easement to the Jefferson Land Trust that would permanently protect the adjoining 160 acres of forestland for wildlife habitat and sustainable forestry.

Although the property is next to the Tarboo Wildlife Preserve, it would not be part of it, said Jude Rubin, stewardship director of NWI.

“But it would be managed for essentially the same purposes,” she said.

“Functionally, if you were an eagle, you wouldn’t know the difference, but if you were a person looking at ownership records, you would,” she said.

The LLC forestland is owned by the Scott and Susan Freeman family, who named the tract in honor of Susan’s father, Carl Leopold—a son of conservationist Aldo Leopold, who had an abiding love for forests and conservation work.

“We are delighted to be working with NWI and the land trust to protect a large tract of forestland in the Tarboo valley,” Susan Freeman said in a statement.

Owen Fairbank, president of the Jefferson Land Trust, said the project “fits well with the goal of conserving working forests, which was identified by the community as they helped us develop our 100-year-vision conservation plan for Jefferson County.”

Upland forest acquisition is a new step in the decade-long effort to preserve and restore the Tarboo Creek watershed and Tarboo-Dabob Bay, Bahls said.

To date, more than 500 acres along Tarboo Creek and more than 2,000 acres within the Dabob Bay Natural Area have been protected by a large coalition of conservation organizations, landowners and agencies.

“Beyond protecting the wetlands and streams themselves, keeping the uplands in sustainable forestry is the best way to protect water quality for wild coho and chum salmon habitat in Tarboo Creek and the oyster beds downstream in Tarboo-Dabob Bay,” Rubin said.

Donors can contact Bahls at 360-385-6786 or Peter@nwwatershed.org.