Nearly 9,000 feet of Lake Creek and 700 acres of family-owned forest and farmland in North Idaho and eastern Washington are permanently protected, the Inland Northwest Land Conservancy announced.

The protected land includes forests, hayfields, wetlands and stream corridors and helps native cutthroat trout complete their life cycle from the headwaters of Lake Creek to Lake Coeur d'Alene and back. 

"This is what conservation in perpetuity looks like — a family's commitment to their land, in partnership with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, keeping this stream healthy for native trout to thrive," said Dave Schaub, executive director, Inland Northwest Land Conservancy. "Partnerships like this are exactly what drive our work across more lands and waters in this region." 

According to a news release, John and Terry Bauer began working with INLC in 2021 to conserve their 700 acres through two conservation easements permanently. 

A restoration partnership grant sponsored by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe helped make the project possible. Together, the protected properties safeguard one of the most important spawning streams for native westslope cutthroat trout flowing into Lake Coeur d'Alene.

“The Tribe has invested decades of work into restoring Lake Creek and bringing native cutthroat back to this watershed,” said Ralph Allan, deputy director of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe Department of Natural Resources and the Tribe’s representative on the Restoration Partnership Trustee Council. “The Restoration Partnership gives us another tool to protect those investments for the long term.” 

Allan said he sees the project as a strong example of what can happen when restoration, land protection and partnerships work together toward the same goals. 

The conservation deal builds on a 25-year partnership between the Bauers and the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, which first surveyed fish on the property in 2001. 

By 2018, that relationship had grown into a full habitat restoration effort supported by Bonneville Power Administration grants, including replacing culverts that blocked fish passage, planting nearly 1,000 aspen and willow along Lake Creek to restore shade and cool the waters and adding hundreds of logs harvested on the property to improve habitat for native trout and other wildlife.

"Since the culverts were replaced, the number of adult trout from the lake that can access prime spawning habitat has increased more than fourfold," said Angelo Vitale, fisheries division manager for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. 

Vitale said he hopes the watershed will eventually be reopened for a harvest fishery managed by the Tribe. He pointed to the range of partners who made the restoration possible, including landowners, land trusts and timber companies.

For John Bauer, fragmentation of working farms and forests was a concern. 

"Once a property is broken into smaller pieces, quality timber harvest and sustainable agriculture become much harder to do," he said.

Now the land will stay intact, and those uses can continue with selective timber harvest guided by a consulting forester, wildfire prevention practices and hayfields that produce commercial crops while leaving plenty of room for wildlife to move through.