A historic Oregon cattle ranch spanning 37 square miles sold for $27.55 million; buyer plans conservation credit projects instead of development

The historic Steiwer Ranch, located outside Fossil, Oregon, on Butte Creek, sold in April 2025 for $27.55 million to a Delaware-registered company that had set up operations in Oregon only weeks before the deal closed. Rather than pursuing conventional ranching or development, the buyer's stated business purpose is building mitigation banks, generating tradeable conservation credits from restored habitat. The sale was only the third time in over 120 years the ranch has changed hands. Here's how the deal came together, and what conservation credits could mean for its future.The $27.55 million sale of the historic Steiwer RanchThe transaction closed on 30 April 2025, according to Wheeler County records, with the buyer identified as Silver Spur Real Estate LLC, based in Rolling Hills Estates, Los Angeles. The ranch had been owned by Kathleen and Rick Stanley since around 2003, who listed the property through Live Water Properties of Hood River in October 2024; Hayden Outdoors Real Estate represented the buyer. The 37-square-mile property includes roughly 26 miles of rivers and streams, among them Butte Creek, a documented spawning and rearing habitat for Mid-Columbia steelhead, a population listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.Why Silver Spur bought the ranch to build a mitigation bankIn a sworn filing with the Oregon Secretary of State, Silver Spur's manager, Chian Chou, described the company's business activity as purchasing property and developing mitigation banks. A mitigation bank is land where wetlands, streams or habitat are restored or preserved, converting the resulting ecological improvement into tradeable credits that developers, utilities and other companies can buy to offset environmental damage from construction projects. Industry estimates put the total value of US compensatory mitigation credit transactions at roughly $13 billion annually, with stream restoration credits tied to salmon habitat previously selling for $300 to $700 per linear foot of restored stream.The web of companies and investors behind the Steiwer Ranch dealChian Chou, who also goes by Andy Chou, is the manager of Silver Spur Real Estate LLC, an authorised signatory for related entities Basswood Properties Holdings LLC and Quailwood LLC, and Chief Investment Officer of Kosei Advisors LLC, identified by The Times-Journal as the lead investment entity behind the Wheeler County acquisitions. In February 2026, Silver Spur transferred the ranch's title internally to Basswood. Related entities also purchased the neighbouring 1,856-acre Seven Springs Ranch for $2.2 million in December 2025, bringing the combined Wheeler County holdings of these connected companies to approximately 25,000 acres.What a comparable Oregon mitigation bank suggests about the ranch's potentialA similar venture in Eastern Oregon offers a sense of scale: Three Creek LLC, a group of roughly 10 investors, acquired about 40,000 acres in Malheur and Baker counties in 2021 and developed Oregon's first sage grouse conservation bank, later selling credits to utilities PacifiCorp and Idaho Power to offset habitat damage from a major transmission line project. Industry sources estimate sage grouse and big-game habitat credits in the region can sell for $5,000 to $25,000 each. No mitigation bank prospectus has yet been filed publicly for the former Steiwer Ranch; the property's long-term conservation credit value could be worth many times its $27.55 million purchase price.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.