Vashon-Maury Land Trust purchases two new properties

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 31, 2026

The Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust has acquired 56 acres of what they call “ecologically significant” land, completing two long-anticipated purchases that staff say will help protect critical wildlife habitat and water resources on the island.

The new acquisitions advance the land trust’s long-term vision of protecting Vashon’s natural environments and helping them thrive.

“Conserving and caring for these wildlands and working lands on the island is our mandate to the community and why the community so generously supports this work,” Executive Director Theron Shaw said.

For over three decades, Conservation Director Tom Dean said, the land trust has worked to acquire 410 acres of land across the island, and has helped to preserve more than 3,200 total acres in partnership with King County and Vashon Parks.

While some properties, like Shinglemill Creek, are accessible to the public and include trails, Dean said these newest acquisitions are intended primarily for habitat preservation. “Both of these purchases and both of those preserves are in the spirit of wildlife preservation rather than trails and parks,” Dean said.

The larger of the two acquisitions is the 51-acre North Maury Wildlands, a property Dean said includes a vast forest and a sprawling shoreline that are important habitat for many different kinds of wildlife in the area.

Situated in the uplands of the property stands a forest of western hemlock trees — the state tree of Washington — known for their large stature, drooping branches and dark green needles. Although hemlocks are common across the island, Dean said it is much rarer to come across the kind of near-old-growth forest found in the North Maury Wildlands.

Hemlocks thrive in cool, damp conditions, and across Washington, many are now showing signs of stress as hotter, drier conditions — driven in part by climate change — take a toll.

Protecting the forest will also help preserve the habitat of the northern flying squirrels, which nest in large tree cavities often created by woodpeckers, according to the organization’s March newsletter.

The shoreline portion of the property is significant too. Vashon contains 90% of the county’s unarmored shorelines — coastline that has not been modified by structures, according to the land trust. Those beaches support the spawning of foraging fish essential to the health of the entire Salish Sea ecosystem, the newsletter also said.

The area also provides nesting habitat for belted kingfishers and pigeon guillemots, birds that are sensitive to human disturbance.

Dean said preserving the North Maury Wildlands carries forward the legacy of longtime owner Joe Van Os, who spent decades buying up property on Maury for the sole purpose of keeping it undeveloped.

“He was so passionate about it that he wanted to really kind of create his own preserve on Vashon,” Dean said.

The second acquisition adds five acres to Tahlequah Creek Preserve, bringing the land trust’s total holdings there to 35 acres.

The newly purchased land includes 600 feet of Tahlequah Creek, adding to a total of 3,600 feet protected by the land trust. The site is an important part of the aquifer recharge system on Vashon, which provides the island’s drinking water, the land trust’s Operations Manager Jenny Stamper said.

The land trust has devoted careful attention to creeks on the island, Dean said, including Judd Creek and Shinglemill Creek, which stand out for hosting wildlife and helping foster new life. Adding more acres to the Tahlequah Creek Preserve was a logical next step, Dean said.

Environments that contain a water source, like creeks and beaches, are especially biodiverse and often support important habitats that make them worth protecting, Dean said.

“From a wildlife habitat perspective, we’re often working where the water is,” Dean said.

Little development has happened in the newly-aquired area, Stamper said, and Tahlequah Creek is one of the wildest creeks on the island. With the acquisition, five more acres will remain that way.

A larger vision

King County, the 12th most populous county in the United States, continues to grow rapidly as more people choose to make the region home. But county leaders say they want to ensure that growth does not come at the expense of the green spaces that help define the Pacific Northwest’s character, beauty and environmental health.

That work is guided by the Land Conservation Initiative, the county’s framework for collaborating with cities, farmers, environmental groups and other partners. Together, they focus on protecting the county’s most important natural areas, including those on Vashon Island.

The initiative is funded primarily by Conservation Futures, a tax levy that was established in 1982, but declined over the years due to state limitations on property tax growth. In 2022, the tax was restored to its original authorized rate with the passage of Proposition 1, an effort to accelerate the county’s acquisition of green spaces.

Since then, the county has been working to protect an additional 65,000 acres of land, adding to the more than 100,000 acres already protected.

Early last year, the levy funded $107 million in new acquisitions, including the lowland forests of Camp Sealth on Vashon Island.

In the land trust office, a map of Vashon-Maury Island hangs on the wall, displaying all the properties preserved by the land trust, marked in green.

For Shaw, the land trust’s work is stitching that map back together, adding more green.

“It’s been carved up into parcels for individual owners,” Shaw said. “We do this on behalf of communities so that 100 years from now the landscape has lots of green bits on it.”