FWP calculates landlocked acreage in Montana
Brett French | Billings Gazette Communications
Fish, Wildlife & Parks has come up with its own estimate of landlocked acreage in Montana, and it’s about 3,000 more acres than a private company’s previous calculation.
The state agency unveiled its estimate during a two-day meeting in Glasgow of its Private Land/Public Wildlife Committee meeting.
The Missoula-based GPS mapping and navigation company onX raised the issue of landlocked public lands in a 2018 report titled “Off Limits, But Within Reach.” In cooperation with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, 9.52 million acres of inaccessible public lands were identified by onX, mostly in western states.
In Montana, onX found about 3.1 million acres of landlocked public land, an amount FWP’s analysis corroborated.
“Our analysis breaks that down to being about 2.2 million acres locked by private land, about 874,000 locked by a corner-to-corner access,” Jason Kool, FWP landowner and sportsman coordinator, told the committee.
However, the state said of the 874,000 acres it identified — that’s 1,365 square miles — 28% are already open to public hunters through current FWP access programs.
That leaves 628,000 public acres — 981 square miles — of land only accessible by corner crossing.
Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras, in talking to an interim legislative committee last month, said the amount of inaccessible corner-crossing acreage is minimal compared to the overall public lands in Montana. Yet if the 628,000 acres were combined into one ranch it would be larger than billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s 402,000-acre Matador Ranch and Cattle located in southwestern Montana, one of the largest in the state.
Hi-Line outfitter and Republican state senate candidate Eric Albus echoed the administration’s concerns in his comments to the PL/PW.
“Is it worth alienating a bunch of landowners over .06% that doesn’t have access to it?” he questioned.
Committee member Drew Steinberger stressed there’s value in accessible public lands, even if some people never use them and that the state and PL/PW has a “unique opportunity” to find a solution that can have a long-term effect.
