A new conservation easement worth $29.3 million establishes year-round public access for hunting and fishing on roughly 20,000 acres of privately-owned timber land in northwest Montana. The deal, announced Thursday by the Trust for Public Land, is the fourth of its kind between TPL and the Stimson Lumber Company.
The conservation easement permanently protects 20,629 acres of forest from development in Lincoln, Mineral, and Sanders counties. That includes 39 miles of streams, 309 acres of riparian habitat, and 472 acres of wetlands. This helps maintain water quality for some 30,000 downstream residents — a small but crucial effort as the federal government looks to roll back Clean Water Act protections for huge swaths of the U.S.
The easement also helps provide more points of public access to existing federal lands, since the private timber land shares 115 miles of border with U.S. Forest Service and state lands, according to an April scoping notice published by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“In a state where forestland faces continued risks of subdivision or sell-offs, conservation easements like this permanently protect and benefit working forests, clean water, wildlife, the local economy, and public access to the out of doors,” Trust for Public Land’s Northern Rockies director David Weinstein said in a statement.
The conservation easement does not protect one contiguous piece of land. Instead, it applies to a patchwork of lands across the area. The easement includes habitat and travel corridors for elk, mule deer, whitetails, and moose.
“Conservation easement terms would preclude the human wildlife conflicts that come with residential development of properties within wildlife habitat, especially those with grizzly bears, black bears, and mountain lions,” reads the MFWP scoping notice. “The property currently provides over 6,000 days per year of public hunting access that would be secured in perpetuity.”
MFWP owns the easement and approved it at an August meeting, but did not pay for it. Rather, the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy program put up $10.2 million, TPL fundraised about $1 million in private donations, utility company Avista contributed $250,000, and NorthWestern Energy donated $150,000. Stimson Lumber donated the remaining 60 percent of the easement’s value, or about $17.7 million.
Stimson Lumber Company is one of the largest landowners in that part of the state, according to the Billings Gazette. The project builds on 107,664 acres Stimson has already committed under conservation easements for public access in northwest Montana.
All three counties supported the easement, and all substantive concerns submitted during the public comment period were addressed. Overall, just 14 comments were submitted.