by Kevin Gorman, Executive Director
Alashík Preserve is Friends’ latest acquisition through our Share the Wonder campaign. Watch the video below for a 4K aerial tour of the preserve, and browse a photo gallery here.
Friends of the Columbia Gorge Land Trust’s most recent acquisition is a nod to the little guy. While our scrappy land trust could be considered the little guy in this story as we took on logging and mining interests to successfully acquire this 120-acre gem, the real little guy is the embattled but resilient Northwestern pond turtle. The ponds and forests here that the Washington state-endangered turtles rely on will now be preserved in perpetuity.
The range of the Northwestern pond turtle once stretched from British Columbia to Northern California. But logging, mining, and residential development completely wiped out populations in British Columbia and California, leaving a small handful of turtle populations in Oregon and Washington. The state of Washington has listed the turtle as a state-endangered species, while the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is considering a federally threatened species listing.
One of the most productive habitats for these turtles lies between Wind and Dog Mountains in the central Columbia Gorge. In 2015, Friends purchased Turtle Haven, a 60-acre property in Skamania County, and began an aggressive turtle restoration project working with the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Oregon Zoo. Our collaboration led the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to name us Partner of the Year in 2024.
In early 2024, a 120-acre property adjacent to Turtle Haven came on the market. It was owned for decades by a longtime timber family in the Gorge and was marketed for its logging potential. The owners indicated their intention to retain the “mineral rights,” meaning that after the future owner logged the property, the original owners would have the right to come in and mine the gravel intensively. As a result, the presumed highest value of the property was to strip away the beautiful mix of stream channels, wetlands, ponds, forests, and boulders to nothing. As the property sits adjacent to and above Turtle Haven, the logging and mining runoff would have tumbled down onto our restored preserve.
So Friends went to work to purchase the property. Negotiations stalled as a timber buyer offered to purchase it and leave the mineral rights to the original owners. But the deal fell through and Friends eventually convinced the land owner to sell us the land and give up the mineral rights.
Turtle biologists, never having been allowed on the property previously, were thrilled with our purchase as there are numerous ponds ideal for turtle rearing. Today, they are walking the lands and kayaking the ponds of Alashík for the first time. More endangered turtles have been found, and in this small pocket of the Gorge, there is renewed hope that in this battle for survival, the turtle might just win the race.
Over the coming months, Friends will release more information on Alashík, beginning with a series of videos spotlighting Northwestern pond turtle conservation, bullfrog eradication, and forest management. We’ll also feature a piece on the climate resilience potential of the preserve in our spring 2025 Passages magazine.
Alashík (turtle) comes from the Sahaptin language (referred to by native speakers as Ichishkíin), spoken primarily by Yakama people along the Columbia River in south-central Washington and northern Oregon.
Click/tap here to hear the correct pronounciation of alashík by late Yakama elder, linguist, and Sahaptin dictionary co-author Virginia Beavert.