Land deal raises a few questions

Inter Lake editorial

Sen. Max Baucus bills it as the most significant conservation deal in Montana history, and he's right. This week's announcement that Plum Creek is selling 320,000 acres for conservation purposes may be hard to top.

The Montana Legacy Project was made possible by a provision in the recently approved U.S. Farm Bill that allows federal bonds to be sold, providing up to $250 million toward an overall purchase price of $510 million.

The balance must be raised by the nonprofit partners in the project, including the Trust For Public Lands and the Nature Conservancy.

The basics sound simple, but in reality the project will be complex, involving three closing transactions over the next three years. How those transactions unfold remains to be seen, raising plenty of questions about the project.

Plum Creek, for instance, is requiring "fiber supply agreements" to ensure that timber continues to flow from the lands that are sold to its Western Montana manufacturing facilities for up to 15 years.

How much timber will be harvested, and who gets to decide? More important, perhaps: What's the long-term outlook for Plum Creek in Western Montana?

So far, the Montana Legacy Project's backers maintain that purchased lands eventually will be conveyed to the U.S. Forest Service, the state of Montana and to private ownerships, provided there are conservation easements discouraging subdivision and development and maintaining public access. The nonprofit partners say they have no plans to assume long-term ownership of the lands.

How will the ownership mix get sorted out for 320,000 acres spread across five counties?

The driving purpose behind the project is to retain access to lands that traditionally have been open to public use. Will that traditional access be maintained once the lands have been transferred, say, to Forest Service ownership?

Fortunately, there will be a series of meetings in coming months for the public and the project backers to discuss these questions and more.

Make no mistake, the Montana Legacy Project is a plum deal for Plum Creek.

The company may have gotten more money selling the land piecemeal to other buyers, but that would have involved scores of protracted transactions, along with land-use planning reviews and sure-fire complaints from the public.

Instead, Plum Creek has a deal in hand for a vast amount of land, with general goodwill and approval from the public.

There are critics who are concerned about turning over more land to state and federal governments in Western Montana, a landscape that already is dominated by public lands.

But we have to consider what could eventually happen otherwise.

Plum Creek lands long have been open to the public for hunting, fishing, hiking and, in many places, motorized recreation. Over time, through piecemeal sales, those lands would be shut off with "no trespassing" signs, fences and orange blazes. It would be a huge loss. And the proliferation of scattered trophy homes would come at a cost, demanding government services such as law enforcement, road maintenance and fire protection.

Instead, the average Montanan should benefit from the Montana Legacy Project.