CONSERVATION -- An Oregon tax incentive to preserve wildlife habitat has been grossly abused by some property owners forcing the state to put the brakes on new sign ups until oversight is beefed up.

In one case, a homeowner received tax deductions for "wildlife habitat" turned into a dirt-bike motorcycle play area.

The following d detailed story recently appeared in the Bend Bulletin.

By KATE RAMSAYER and HILLARY BORRUD

The Bulletin

The expansive motorcycle play area didn’t mesh with the plan to protect and improve wildlife habitat.

Neither did replacing a 924-square-foot house with a 3,500-square-foot one and a 626-square-foot art studio or, on a separate property, carving a road over a rimrock cliff, down a canyon and up the other side.

The owners of these properties had signed up for the state Wildlife Habitat Conservation Management Program, which provides a significant tax break for people who maintain and improve habitat on their land.

But when Larry Pecenka, a habitat biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, began inspecting participating properties several years ago, he found that roughly a third of the landowners were violating the contracts to which they had agreed.

“That kind of gave us a heads up...Some of these landowners had objectives, but it’s not the same as the program’s objectives,” Pecenka said.

While officials and beneficiaries say the program helps wildlife and property owners alike, oversight has proved difficult. Biologists who inspect properties and approve plans have barely enough time and resources to ensure that everyone plays by the rules. For that reason, they’d like to keep the program from growing. Deschutes County, nonetheless, recently expanded eligibility for the program and for the tax breaks it brings.

Those who haven’t played by the rules, meanwhile, have been kicked out of the program and been required to reimburse the county for thousands of dollars of lost tax revenue.

Although such abuse has been frustrating, says Pecenka, most of the program’s participants joined because they care about their land, and the conservation program helps preserve habitat as development expands in Deschutes County.

The Legislature established the Wildlife Habitat Conservation Management Program in 1997, and Deschutes County decided to participate the following year. Taxpayers are eligible if they have property that is zoned for exclusive farm use and offers some significant habitat values, including wetlands, old-growth juniper and rimrock. The landowners, with the help of a biologist, draw up individual plans that outline what is needed — and what will be prohibited — on the property.

“This isn’t a freebie. This isn’t a way to dodge taxes,” Pecenka said. “We’re for somebody who has a passion: ‘This is something we want to do with our property.”’

Plans can include conditions such as limited grazing, restrictions on additional construction, the installation of bird boxes, allowing hay to stand uncut until mid-July (to provide bird-nesting habitat), even cutting down small junipers to leave water for other species, Pecenka said.

“ODFW does not tell landowners what to do on their property,” Pecenka wrote in an e-mail. “We hold them to what they agreed to do on their property as indicated in the mutually agreed to WHCMP plan.”

And agreeing to the plan gives landowners a property tax break that can amount to several thousand dollars a year. In 2010, Deschutes County property owners lowered their tax bills on 125 parcels by approximately $100 to $7,700, according to estimates released by the county Assessor’s Office.

In all, program participants in Deschutes County saved $250,000 in property taxes last year. Revenue dropped by an equivalent amount for the county and other government agencies, including schools and police departments.

Those numbers could soon rise, thanks to the county commission’s decision Wednesday to expand eligibility for the program to property owners with forest-zoned land. Previously, only those with land zoned for exclusive farm use could participate.

However, it’s still up to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to decide whether to accept applications for the program.

In Deschutes County, the state wildlife agency did not admit new people into the program between 2008 and 2009, Pecenka said. It admitted only one property last year and expects to admit only one this year. The slowdown is an attempt to catch up on monitoring and ensure that every property is checked at least once every four years.

When Pecenka shows up for an inspection, he can often tell immediately whether a landowner is doing what he or she should.

Some people will be less than thrilled by his visit and ask if he actually needs to see their properties.

Others will greet him with a three-ring binder, full of pictures of the deer and birds they’ve spotted in the backyard.

Sherry and Kim Christoffersen, who own about 160 acres east of Bend off Highway 20, have snapshots of the wildflowers that have dotted their juniper and sagebrush landscape in the spring.

The property was previously county land, Sherry Christoffersen said, and was littered with mattresses, stoves and all kinds of trash when they bought it.

“Gosh, it was just horrible,” she said. “And we’re still cleaning. There are still dumpsites.”

But the two heard about the wildlife habitat program and, after spending about three months getting through the paperwork, put most of their property in the program in 2006.

The tax break is “very nice,” she said, but setting aside acres is mostly a benefit for the animals displaced by Bend’s growth.

“With the building for a while there, they were just stripping down (trees), and more houses were going up,” she said. “The animals were pushed further and further, and then we’d find cougars walking down the street.”

Walking the property Friday morning, Kim Christoffersen startled a covey of quail as he pointed out areas where he cleared out small juniper trees — about 5,000 of them in all, he estimates. He picked up a scrap of old barbed wire, coiled it up and put it in his pocket. After joining the wildlife habitat program, he replaced the barbed wire fence with a smooth, more animal-friendly version. He also built a “guzzler” to provide a little source of water out on the High Desert.

“It’s one of those labors of love,” he said.

Not everyone takes plans to heart.

Pecenka sent a letter to the local participants in 2009, stating that 18 landowners had been removed from the program because of noncompliance, while 10 more were “teetering on the brink” of expulsion.

Some people build houses, garages, studios or other buildings in places that were not approved in plans, or they add unapproved fences.

One person excavated wildlife habitat near rimrock while digging septic test pits and cut down large junipers to improve the views from homesites. That same landowner was supposed to plant 50 bitterbrush seedlings in each of three areas, but only a single seedling was there when the property was inspected.

Another landowner’s agreement called for installing at least eight nesting or roosting structures for birds, but an inspection revealed just one, on its side, in the branches of a juniper tree. The landowner was also grazing horses in a wetland, against plan rules, and had not completed beneficial things like adding wildflowers or sprucing up reptile habitat.

Others let the noxious weeds run wild or didn’t cut down encroaching juniper as they said they would. Some violated the plan’s agreement on fencing — where it should be, and what kind is allowed.

Once out of the program, landowners have to repay up to 10 years’ worth of wildlife tax breaks.

In the past five years, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has asked the county to remove the tax deferrals from 33 tax accounts because the owners were not complying, voluntarily leaving the program or selling the property to people who were not interested in participating.

The owners of most of the removed properties have paid those taxes, which range from $419 to $35,897, according to the Assessor’s Office.

Michael and Peggy Jo Spedick are the only ones removed from the program who have not paid the back taxes. They owe $13,782. There was no telephone listing for the couple on Sunday, and they could not be reached by The Associated Press for comment.

County Commissioner Tony DeBone acknowledged the state wildlife agency’s concerns that it might not have the resources to monitor additional properties. However, he said, the commissioners voted for the expansion in the hope that in the future the program will be limited to people who “really would want to do it.”

At the same time commissioners expanded eligibility for the program, they committed to reviewing every two years the amount of taxes deferred and the impact on taxing districts.

The county expanded the habitat program in response to a request from resident William Kuhn, who asked commissioners last fall to open the program for forest-zoned land, allowing him to participate, DeBone said.

“He and his wife really do care for the environment,” DeBone said of Kuhn.