
Oregon State University (OSU) and Trust for Public Land (TPL) have acquired over 3,100 acres of forest off Highway 30 south of Scappoose. If that parcel sounds familiar it’s because six years ago the Portland-based nonprofit Northwest Trail Alliance signed a lease with timber company Weyerhaeuser to manage the land and the off-road cycling group has since developed nearly 40 miles of singletrack trails.
The Rocky Point Trail System, a mere 10 miles northwest of St. Johns, has become one of the most popular mountain biking destinations in the region. News of the purchase rippled through cycling circles today as folks worried that the change in ownership from a commercial entity to a conservation group, might impact cycling access. A statement about the purchase today from NWTA calling the move “excellent news” have calmed those fears.
“The intent is — and always was — to include and enhance public access to the property as part of OSU’s research, education, and outreach priorities for the forest. There is no indication that recreational access, specifically mountain biking, will be removed from the property. NWTA is supportive of and excited for the potential under this new partnership.” NWTA wrote on their website about the news.
The land was acquired by TPL and they’ve transferred ownership to OSU. The school’s College of Forestry will manage the lane as a demonstration project and it will be known as the “Tualatin Mountain Forest.”
NWTA says they’ve signed a partnership agreement to remain trail stewards of the land. All current NWTA members who have access to the Rocky Point Trail System will maintain that privilege and no immediate changes to the permit program are in the works.
If you care about these trails, this is good news. It means the public access is no longer at the whim of Weyerhaeuser. TPL clearly sees public access as an asset to the land, not a burden. “Conserving and opening access to the Tualatin Mountain Forest is an investment in the health and well-being of communities across the Portland metro area… We’re deeply grateful for the collaboration between partners, which will help ensure that everyone can connect with the outdoors and experience the benefits of nearby nature,” said Kristin Kovalik, Oregon Program Director for Trust for Public Land.
A statement from TPL said they plan to develop a visitor use and recreation plan in the coming years that, “ensures ecological integrity of the forest and community benefit, as well as alignment with active forest management.” New educational programs for Portland-area youth are also in the future plans.
Read more in TPL’s press release.
Thanks for reading.
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NWTA put a lot of hard and very careful work into making this a success. Their involvement at the property and negotiations goes wayyyy back to even when Dabby was the lease holder.
A steady and patient hand got us here, and I’m very grateful to those that made it happen! Thanks to the trail builders. Thanks to the trail maintainers. And thanks to WeyCo for trusting the community to take care of their land for those 6 years.
Also worth mentioning that this will likely be great for gravel rides as well. WeyCo required membership not just for riding the trails, but for accessing the property in any capacity. Point is, there are about to be a lot more public gravel connections in the West Hills!
As far as I am aware membership with NWTA is all you need to ride the trails at Rocky Point not a access permit from WeyCo. WeyCo does sale walk-in permits for hunters. They also offer a limited number of drive permits.
That’s generally true for WeyCo properties. However, the lease that they provided with NWTA required membership for any access to the property
Do you know it the new owners (OSU) will continue that requirement or do something different.
I could only speculate…
Update from NWTA: https://nw-trail.org/exciting-news-about-the-rocky-point-trail-system/
The Oregonian article is much more detailed.
Not sure there’s all that much cause to celebrate. Logging will continue on the property:
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The regime and rate of cutting will be dramatically different. Will not be at all like the massive clear cuts WeyCo was doing like on the North Side.
As someone who has recreated extensively in OSU research forests outside of Corvallis, I can assure you that this is a better outcome than having this in the hands of a private timber company.
This is also an opportunity to exercise selective thinning rather than clear-cutting. This would mean that logging could happen in a area with trails, and those trails could be quickly refurbished and still remain in forest, just one at a more natural stand density. A lot of Rocky point is a dense dark toothpick forest and desperately needs thinning, or nature will find its own way to thin via fire
I hiked through a working forest in Germany, and could see the huge pile of logs they were able to pull out while the forest remained largely intact, though it was clearly a working forest and not a pristine wilderness. In some cases they were able to do the work with cables, without building roads.
Everything that is being harvested is 2nd Growth Timber. So the roads have already been built. And almost all logging operations use cables to move the logs from where there felled to where there loaded on the trucks. You should look up the timber job Choker. In fact its what Grays Harbor College calls their sport teams.
My point was really that selective harvesting can extract a lot of wood without destroying the forest (we do some of that here, I wish we’d do more). The German forests I saw were probably 10th growth timber, if not more.
Yes, they did have a head start on their deforestation. This conversation sent me down a rabbit hole to see how timber production in Germany compares to the US. So, Germany produces about 70.6 million Cubic Meters of lumber a year. The US produces about 110.93 million cubic meters a year. This is where it gets interesting. The total forest land in Germany is 28.2 million acres where the US total forest land is 816.814 million acres. So, by percentage the Germans harvest more forest than we do. So, you believe that the way we log destroys forests, I am going to disagree. Having lived in Columbia County for most of my 66 years I have seen areas (like Crown Point) logged in the 70s and 80s only to be replanted and return as healthy forests. George Weyerhaeuser started replanting forests after harvesting in the 1920s long before it was required by any state or federal laws. Today you will find 3rd and 4th generation forests in SW Washington that are healthy and thriving.
I don’t know about the long-term prognosis, but having walked through recently clear-cut forests and recently selectively harvested forests I would certainly characterize one as “destroyed” and the other not. Most replanted forests are not “healthy” by ecological metrics; they are often a dense monoculture. To be fair, I don’t know how to compare that to a working forest in Europe.
Regardless, it is clearly possible to extract a lot of wood from a forest while leaving it largely intact. Clear cutting is a choice, not a necessity to harvest wood.
They just need a solid harvesting plan and stick with it.
Knowing how slowly the trees grow, the Navy was thinking awfully far ahead to supply itself with material to keep afloat well into the 20th century. But by the time the trees were ready, almost 150 years later, they showed no interest in using them, having long converted to ship hulls crafted from iron and steel.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/visingso-oak-forest
Helicopter logging is fairly popular. They’ve done this periodically in the MTB area at Stub Stewart to get rid of snags
Wow, this is amazing! That area is great, but it always seemed like the trails were at the whim of the landowners, and not permanent. Around 2010 or so, I remember no one being allowed to cut trees across the trail as they would be “of value” when the forest was harvested. Definitely made for a strange arrangement. It was understandable that with WeyCo in charge, all of those type of “real” improvements were off the table. Kudos to WeyCo for allowing any of this in the first place. Hopefully this new ownership allows for more (small) development with improved parking, access, hiking trails, bathrooms, etc.
That sounds really promising—it should make it easier to plan long-term. I’m hoping NWTA can push for more beginner- and family-friendly trails. It’d be amazing to see more kids and families getting into mountain biking.
Best I can do is a half dozen double black diamond gravity lines for extreeeeme athletes on ebikes with 10″ travel
For better or for worse, “shovels decide” has been the motto at RPT. If there’s a trail you’d like to see built, start walking in the woods, come up with an alignment, and make a proposal.
I can’t promise that workflow will stay in place with the new owners though.
Oh and I don’t ride an e-bike.
I just looked on our trail management software and we have over 11 miles of beginner-rated trail with another two miles planned.
If you haven’t yet checked them out, there are many new trails constructed on the north side of the property in the last few years for that specific purpose. Lots of green and blue
Hey Mary,
This and the other comment made me curious, so I did a deep dive into the trail mileage at RPT. Here’s a table of the current mileage by trail rating. Note that more trail will open later this month and I don’t know how that will change these numbers.
But the main take away is that if you include access roads, Advanced and Expert terrain only makes up 16% of the mileage at RPT. If you exclude the access roads, it’s still only 25% of the terrain.
Considering that the roads provide several necessary connections, I think the 16% better reflects the ride experience. But considering the roads were already there, the 25% figure reflects the volunteer effort put into those more advanced trails.
Hmm. My table didn’t attach. Here’s the mileage listed out
Super interesting to see this breakdown – thanks for posting it!
It will be interesting to see if this somehow leads to a connector to Metro’s long-delayed Tualatin Mountain park.