Capitol Land Trust has permanently protected 218 acres of mostly undeveloped shoreline and forest on Steamboat Peninsula in Thurston County, the nonprofit's most expensive conservation project to date.

The land trust announced the $5 million conservation easement on Friday, Oct. 2 and detailed the effort in interviews with The Olympian published Thursday, Oct. 8. Five grants totaling $5 million funded the purchase. The property sits at the end of 69th Avenue Northwest along Totten Inlet, northwest of Olympia.

At the heart of the protected land is Hudson Cove, a 7.8-acre pocket estuary where freshwater streams meet Puget Sound saltwater. Five salmonid species use the cove, including federally threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead. The marine waters are also federally recognized as critical habitat for Southern Resident orcas.

"So pocket estuaries that are intact like this, that is very rare habitat-wise," Capitol Land Trust spokesperson Liz Burton-Crow told The Olympian.

The property is owned by the Taylor family, operators of Taylor Shellfish Farms, who approached Capitol Land Trust to begin the process four to five years ago. The easement is a legally binding agreement that runs with the land in perpetuity. It prohibits cutting shoreline trees, building bulkheads or docks, and limits housing to three clustered home sites. One house already stands on the property.

Senior Project Manager Laurence Reeves said the vast majority of the shoreline is undeveloped, with thousands of feet of natural coastline and large trees leaning over the water. The property includes roughly 2.5 miles of marine and freshwater shoreline, more than 4,700 feet of streams, and about 200 acres of native forest with western redcedar, Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce and Pacific madrone, according to the Capitol Land Trust project page.

More than 100 bird species use the property, including bald eagles, peregrine falcons and great blue herons. The shoreline's high feeder bluffs provide habitat for the giant chain fern, a state-sensitive plant.

Funders included the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program, Washington Department of Ecology, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board, Thurston County Conservation Futures, the Squaxin Island Tribe and Taylor Shellfish Farms.

The easement builds on Capitol Land Trust's earlier work at Adams Cove Preserve, which protects another Totten Inlet pocket estuary nearby on Steamboat Island. The Hudson Cove property also borders the Department of Natural Resources' Kennedy Creek Natural Resources Conservation Area, a 1,110-acre preserve along Totten Inlet's main tributary.

With Hudson Cove, Capitol Land Trust has now conserved more than 6,900 acres and more than 20 miles of Puget Sound shoreline across Thurston, Lewis, Mason and Grays Harbor counties.

The property is private and not open to the public. Capitol Land Trust staff will visit annually to monitor the easement's terms.