BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
Will Israel praised a slate of 22 habitat conservation easements that were approved by the Fish and Wildlife Commission on Aug. 21 as proof that Montana residents are good people.
The 30- and 40-year term easements are spread across more than 68,000 acres, the majority of which is in Eastern Montana, and will distribute to the landowners more than $7.88 million.
All of the money will be drawn from the Habitat Montana fund, half of which will come from license dollars mostly paid by nonresident hunters and half from marijuana revenue. One component of all FWP easements is providing some public access.
“Each one of these property owners could sell these properties for millions more,” said Israel, executive director of the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association. “They could be developed. They could become anything other than just a property for a rich guy from Saudi Arabia to come and sit and look at Montana mountains.”
Thursday was a big day for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks’ conservation efforts, with a total of more than 122,300 acres of easements approved.
Stafford Ferry CE approved
Among the other agreements the commission signed off on was the Stafford Ferry perpetual conservation easement in Fergus County, which contains 1,080 deeded acres in priority bighorn sheep habitat while also providing access to adjacent BLM lands.
The land appraised for $1.08 million, but donations by NorthWestern Energy, the Wild Sheep Foundation, Montana Wild Sheep Foundation and the landowner lowered the cost to $980,000.
First outlined in 2023, the agreement dragged amid outcry from some hunters who blamed changes in FWP rules for permanent conservation easements under Gov. Greg Gianforte. Why the agreement may have taken longer was finally revealed.
“This is one I worked very closely on with the governor’s staff, including the lieutenant governor, in which we built into it the concept of active agricultural production, and actually made that ag production one of the conservation values that’s identified in this easement,” said Bill Schenk, Lands Program manager for FWP.
“So it broke some new ground up in this area,” Schenk said. “That is the vision. There is cattle ranching, cattle grazing.”
Ty Stubblefield, executive director of the Montana Wild Sheep Foundation, praised the agreement.
“This has been a long time coming, and we really appreciate that we’re having this conversation today,” he said. “This conserves agriculture, it conserves wildlife values, and it conserves this ranch. And Montana is — whether we like it or not — growing, and this will continue to be a bigger problem in the future.
“This is the best example of why Habitat Montana is Montana popular, Montana made and Montana unique,” he added.
Northwestern Montana deal OK’d
Lastly, the commission signed off on the second phase of the Montana Great Outdoors Conservation Easement, which includes 52,930 acres in northwest Montana, land owned by Green Diamond Resource Co. The appraised value for the land was more than $57.54 million.
Funding for the easement included $1.5 million from Habitat Montana, $200,000 from the Montana Fish and Wildlife Conservation Trust, $35.8 million from the U.S. Forest Service Forest Legacy Program and a $20 million donation from Green Diamond, about 35% of the easement’s value.
Coupled with the first phase, the easement now totals 85,752 acres.
“As somebody who’s been born and raised in the Flathead, I can’t … show any more support,” said Region 1 Commissioner Ian Wargo. “This is a great project.”
Not without problems
Peter Scott, representing WRH Nevada Properties, protested the Great Outdoors easement on behalf of his client, which owns 54% of the land’s mineral estate. The company’s website boasts of holding mineral rights on acreage in 13 northwestern Montana counties.
“I would ask you to please recognize that support, even overwhelming support, does not mean that the project has been done correctly,” Scott said.
“Green Diamond Company cannot limit the rights of that third party mineral holder,” Schenk admitted. “Also, Green Diamond holds a considerable amount of mineral rights under this as well as the United States and a couple of very small holders.
“There is the possibility in the future there could be surface disturbance as a result,” he added.
“Mr. Schenk’s remarks should give you pause,” Scott told the commission. “This conservation easement specifically allows for mineral activity on more than half of the property you’re considering, and it is expressly incompatible with perpetual protection as provided in those (Forest Legacy Program) guidelines.”
The agreement also allows Green Diamond to continue to log the property as trees harvested from the land by previous owner Plum Creek Timber Co. regrow.
“We still cut logs, we still grow trees, we still do good forestry, and the taxes still flow in,” said Eric Schallon, of Green Diamond, adding the company has land stewardship as a core value.
Term lease complications
Schenk, in discussing the Prairie Habitat Conservation Leases, added an asterisk to the commission’s approval of the 68,300 acres by noting, “That which you approved today doesn’t necessarily get done. We have a lot of due diligence to do with each one of these.”
He said FWP is still working with lenders because some landowners want the sum in two payments, as well as ensuring lands that have multiple owners are all in agreement.
“So there’s a bit of lift yet on these,” he said, adding the agency hopes to have all of the deals closed by the end of the year.
Schenk called the effort, first launched to a low response in 2022 before the program was modified, a “long and difficult process.” The target goal touted by the agency when it began was to have 500,000 acres in five years. If all of the acreage in the current proposals are finalized, FWP will need to enroll more than 360,000 acres, or more than 70% of the total, in the next two years to meet its ambitious goal.
Mike Mershon, board chair and president of the Montana Wildlife Federation, told the commissioners that his group “strongly support and prefer perpetual conservation easements as well as the acquisition of new public lands, though we recognize that perpetual decisions do not work for all conservation-minded landowners.”
He also stressed that Montanans deserve to know what they are getting for their investment in terms of public access and opportunity.
“More information is still needed to best understand the cost-benefit analysis of these temporary conservation leases, and improved public interfaces would help ensure that the public can take full advantage and access the opportunities the public is purchasing,” he added.
Many positive comments
The majority of commenters praised FWP’s and the commission’s actions to safeguard wildlife habitat in Montana while providing public access.
Peter Dudley, of Montana Audubon, said on one of the ranches approved for a habitat conservation lease he conducted bird surveys and identified seven species of greatest conservation need.
“I think if you look at the number of leases that have been brought forward over the last few years, you see a very sharp desire within the landowner community for something like this,” said Ben Lamb of the Montana Conservation Society.
Fish and Wildlife Commission chair and Zortman-area rancher Lesley Robinson called the short-term leases a “pretty good deal for the public” since they get access and taxes paid to counties remain the same.
“The rancher could go with a perpetual easement that had no access and get the same amount of money,” she said. “And honestly, if you took the average age of a rancher right now, this is perpetual, 40 or 30 years.”
Gray Thornton, president and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation, said his group supported the Stafford Ferry easement as a way to increase access to 15,000 acres of adjoining state and BLM lands.
“This is good for bighorn sheep,” he said. “It’s good for the public. And there’s another value that we cherish in Montana, and that is keeping ranching lands in ranching hands.”
