Don’t think of it as a donation.

Rather, Wallowa Land Trust officials say, consider its decision about 30 acres of undeveloped land on the west side of Wallowa Lake as a matter of returning the land to its original owners.

That’s why the parcel of land, originally purchased by the Land Trust in 2014, now belongs to the Nez Perce Tribe. Tribal officials say they’ll keep the land undeveloped and protected for wildlife and open space.

“Wallowa Lake is a heart within Nez Perce territory, a heart of our 1855 Reservation,” said Samuel Penney, a member of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee (NPTEC) and a previous chairman of the committee, in a press release. “Every step taken in protecting it and the lands surrounding it is an important step into our future.”

Kathleen Ackley, the executive director of the Land Trust, said in an interview on May 12 that the trust originally acquired the land for $106,000 from the county in that 2014 transaction. Money for the deal came from the Oregon Community Foundation, which was distributing funds from a legal settlement involving emissions from a Boardman coal-fired power plant.

She said the parcel, west of Lake Shore Drive, had been foreclosed on after its owner failed to pay property taxes. After an attempt to sell the parcel at auction fizzled, the Land Trust offered to buy the land at fair market value, and the county accepted the offer.

The land is on a steep grade, Ackley said, so it’s not particularly conducive to development.

“Let’s just say, you’d have to have a lot of money and be very ambitious to build a house there,” she said.

But it did fit in with key Land Trust goals, to protect open space for conservation and wildlife habitat.

Land Trust officials weren’t thinking at the time about transferring the land back to tribal ownership, Ackley said. But the Land Trust frequently has collaborated with the Nez Perce Tribe on a number of other conservation projects.

“We’ve gotten to know them really well,” Ackley said. “And working with Indigenous people is directly stated in our mission statement.

“And so for us, the more we got to work with the tribe, the more we felt that this was an appropriate thing to do, and that the tribe could manage it just as well, if not better, than we could,” she said.

About two years ago, the Land Trust reached out to tribal officials, who were receptive to the idea — but it’s taken time to iron out all the details. The deal was finalized in March.

“We want to recognize and thank the Wallowa Land Trust for its vision and integrity,” Penney said in the press release. “It has become a trusted partner for the Nez Perce Tribe as we work to advance the tribe’s vision and priorities in Northeast Oregon.”

The Land Trust will continue to pay property taxes, monitor the property and help with stewardship as needed.

Most of Northeast Oregon, and all of what is now Wallowa County, is part of the homeland of the Nez Perce people. For at least 16,000 years, the Nez Perce stewarded the land. The county was part of the 1855 Nez Perce Reservation and remains treaty-reserved territory.

The Wallowa Land Trust has been active since 2004. One of its primary goals since then has been to help rural landowners find alternatives to development, Ackley said, and it’s reached agreements with landowners that protect more than 3,000 acres in the county

The Land Trust also owns a couple of parcels of land outright: One is a property of about 9 acres on the west side of Wallowa Lake at the end of Lakeshore Road. The other property is adjacent to the East Moraine Community Forest.

In fact, Ackley said, many of the Land Trust’s activities have focused on the moraine area. The Land Trust — working with a number of partners, including the Nez Perce Tribe, Wallowa County, Wallowa Resources, Oregon State Parks, and others — has helped to protect much of the land around Wallowa Lake from development.

“It’s been a quite a ride,” she said, “but we’re pretty proud of the work that’s been accomplished.”