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Preserving a ranch in perpetuity
Mark and Patti Bennett
of Baker County signed
a conservation easement
to ensure their land
remains a working ranch
By IAN CRAWFORD
Baker City Herald
U
NITY — The sounds of the sage
grouse defy simple description, a
combination of whooping, plunk-
ing, whooshing and cooing. The
birds can detect infrasound, frequencies
under 20 hertz, from miles away.
In humans, even though infrasounds are
inaudible, there is an innate sensation, a
detectable feeling of worry when exposed to
it at length. An instinctive response attuned
to sometimes dangerous sources.
Mark Bennett has been listening among
the grouse for years on his cattle ranch near
Unity in southern Baker County. When
the future of his nearly 9,000-acre prop-
erty came into question, Bennett acted to
preserve both the land and its grouse, and
turned to land conservation.
“This has been a 10-year project,” said
Bennett, who is also a Baker County com-
missioner. “We’d had a family meeting
(about the future of the ranch), and the kids
said ‘We have our own kids, our careers. We
won’t be returning.’ ”
Bennett said he felt a pang of anguish at
the time.
“We wanted to preserve what my folks
had been doing and what we’d done,” he
said.
His parents bought the property, known
as Secret Valley Ranch, in 1979, and Mark
has been running the ranch since 1989.
Bennett and his wife, Patti, decided that,
come retirement, there needed to be a better
plan than to simply sell the ranch. Handing
it off for the greatest payout opened liability
for the land to be subdivided or abused, and
they needed certainty that it wouldn’t.
The result was a conservation easement,
covering 8,887 acres of the Bennetts’ ranch,
through the Blue Mountain Land Trust, a
nonprofit formed in 1999 and based in Walla
Walla, Washington.
Contributed Photo
Mark and Patti Bennett’s ranch in southern Baker County includes habitat for sage grouse.
“IF EVERYONE TAKES CARE OF THEIR
THINGS, THAT RESPONSIBLE STEWARDSHIP
IS SO IMPORTANT. WE FEEL RESPONSIBLE
TO PROTECT THE WILDLIFE TOO, GOD
WANTS US TO TAKE CARE OF IT.”
— Mark Bennett, Baker County rancher
A conservation easement is a legal agree-
ment between a landowner and a land trust,
such as Blue Mountain Land Trust, that per-
manently limits uses of the land to protect
such values as wildlife habitat.
The property remains privately owned,
but elements of the easement, such as pro-
hibiting the land from being subdivided and
ensuring it remains a working ranch, remain
legally binding even if the land is sold or
transferred to heirs.
“One of the goals that we set was, not
only would there be conservation protec-
tions, but that it would be an economically
viable ranching operation,” Bennett said.
In 2018 the Oregon Watershed Enhance-
ment Board allocated $879,000 to buy the
conservation easement from the Bennetts.
The money comes from the Oregon
Lottery.
The project was coordinated by the Blue
Mountain Land Trust, the federal Natural
Resources Conservation Service and the
Watershed Enhancement Board.
The Bennetts have invested time and
material to protect their ranch and its wild-
life and other resources, and they’ve been
rewarded for their efforts.
“We believe and are able to show that
conservation methods are good for land,
wildlife and are profitable,” Bennett said.
“You can run around, and talk about it, and
people go ‘uh huh, uh huh,’ we set about it
quietly to prove the template, that you could
do it and still profit. We’re not being micro-
managed by an environmentalist group.”
The easement, completed early this year,
acts as a biological oasis for not only the
grouse, but the trout in West Camp Creek,
and other species that inhabit the land from
the tree tops to their root depths.
Bennett said managing the land is a chal-
lenge due to shallow soils and other factors.
“The crucial thing is that we all are
entrusted with something, even if it’s just a
lawn, trees, our responsibility is to make the
best better,” Bennett said. “If everyone takes
care of their things, that responsible stew-
ardship is so important. We feel responsible
to protect the wildlife too, God wants us to
take care of it.”