“We think it would be a terrible loss,” said Bothell resident Sandra Clement. “We can’t afford to keep paving over everything.”

Clement was referring to what many local residents know as the “Boy Scout project,” a wedge of land located roughly in the neighborhood of Northeast 197th Street and stretching to just past Canyon Park Junior High.

The 63.4 acres is undeveloped and, according to the Clement and others, includes nine wetlands and seven streams, as well as first- and second-generation old-growth trees.

Another resident living near the property, Dawn McCravey, said the swathe of green also is home to beavers, deer, owl, woodpeckers and foxes. The land is now for sale, but claiming to have plenty of support from their neighbors and the rest of the community, McCravey and Clement are out to preserve the acreage as green space, with some help from the city.

McCravey said she was part of a group that helped Bothell earn a $200,000 Conservation Futures Grant from King County in order to purchase at least part of the Boy Scout land. McCravey said the city needs to match the money and the total would be enough to buy the deed to what she called a key piece to the overall puzzle, 5.9 acres she said is known as the Hensley parcel.

Located near the middle of the undeveloped area, McCravey said the sale of the Hensley parcel to a developer essentially would destroy the potential of preserving the overall property.

“We need them to move ahead before a developer gets a hold of it,” Clemens said of the city and echoing some of McCravey’s comments.

A discussion of the grant is on the agenda of the July 21 Bothell City Council meeting (6 p.m. at Bothell Municipal Court, 10116 N.E. 183rd St.). Both McCravey and Clement are asking anyone in support of preserving the targeted land as green space to attend the meeting or at least contact city leaders.

“I think the council as a whole is very excited about potentially protecting this land,” said Mayor Mark Lamb, who indicated overall support for the concept of preserving the property as is and indicated the rest of council seems to like the idea, as well. Still, Lamb said there are details that need to be studied, financial questions among them.

“It’s not going to happen all at once,” he said of any preservation project. Still, Lamb added keeping the land green wasn’t “on council’s radar” until the beginning of the year.

Clement said she, McCravey and other supporters of preserving the property have been to an “unbelievable” number of council meetings. Both she and McCravey mentioned handing city officials a petition with some 650 names of residents in favor of preserving the property.

McCravey said that initially she was inspired to get involved in keeping the land out of the hands of developers when her daughter, who attends Canyon Park Junior High, went on a field trip to release salmon into one of the property’s several streams. Living in the immediate area hasn’t hurt her motivation either.

“It’s a pretty extensive water system that we are on top of,” McCravey said of the Maywood Hill area. She added local residents have resisted past attempts to commercially develop the property.

Both McCravey and Clement think the city can apply for further grants, including looking for some help from Snohomish County. For her part, Clement also talked a lot about the many animal and bird species in the area, claiming those animals are surrounded by streets and commercial property and basically have nowhere to go.

“We’re all connected whether we think we are or not,” she added.