Public access to private timber land

Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks is again asking for public comments on the second phase of a conservation easement project with the Green Diamond Company, a timber company.  

The proposed project involves keeping 52,930 acres of traditional public recreation access open for free recreation uses for wide variety of public uses such as hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, berry picking, cross country skiing, snowmobiling and many other forms of outdoor recreation. These types of current public recreation uses occur on these private forest lands due to the generosity of the landowner. The proposed conservation easement would make these public uses permanent.    

For many of us that recreate west of Kalispell, this proposal essentially maintains the traditional privileged public recreation uses of corporate timber lands that we have enjoyed since the settlement of Montana. Currently, in other states, most privately owned corporate timber lands are available for public use, but only after the public buys a recreation use permit. These types of public recreation use permits are not the traditional public use recreation permits charged by public agencies of $5 or $10 per year, but can run up to hundreds of dollars each year, for a right to camp, hike or fish during the summer and hunt in the fall. 

For many reasons, corporate timber lands in Montana have always been open to free public recreation use. I would guess this is because corporate timber lands are usually intermingled with lots of public forest land. Property boundary lines between public and private forest land are generally not well marked, so trying to keep the public off of leased private timber company land is nearly impossible. Due to Montana’s large amount of public forest land and low populations, the demand for private recreation use of corporate timber land, for a fee is low. Therefore, it is not cost effective to lease private forest land.  

Also, these intermingled private and public timber lands were usually developed with jointly financed logging access road systems. Shares of the construction costs and maintenance fees were based on shares of road use or logging traffic. Each party would estimate their share of logging traffic and pay a proportionate share of construction costs. If the new road was likely to be open for public use, the public agency landowner would pay for that share of public road use. Building joint use road systems not only saved each forest landowner construction costs, but was more environmentally friendly than having two road systems in the same drainage. Building roads is expensive in mountain terrain. So private and public forest owners wisely built joint-use road systems.     

Public use of private corporate timber land has been viewed by many members of the public as a right. It isn’t. It’s a privilege. Over the past 100 years, Plum Creek Timber Company, acquired most of the smaller corporate timber company lands in Northwest Montana. When Plum Creek sold all their timber lands several years ago, there was a public outcry to keep these private timber lands open for public recreation uses. Public purchase of conservation easements seems to fit the best of both worlds. Conservation easements allow the corporate timber land owner the right to continue to grow, manage and harvest timber on their forest land, while allowing the public continued recreation access to these same private lands. 

A similar conservation easement proposal, covering another 32,821 acres of Green Diamond timber land has been approved and is nearly completed. The current conservation easement is near another several hundred thousand acres of other corporate easement ownership. 

Our sincere thanks to Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Ryan Zinke for supporting these conservation easement projects. Under the current easement proposal, Green Diamond will continue managing their land for sustained timber production in an environmentally sound manner. Montana FWP would manage the public recreation uses. This seems to be the best of both private and public land management. 

Appraised value of the easement is $57,544,144 with $1,700,000 of state funds and $35,805,000 of federal dollars to be used to pay for this easement,  $20,039,144 of the easement value will be donated by Green Diamond.  

If you wish to learn more about this great conservation easement proposal, contact  LBreidinger@MTFWP. Public comments must be submitted by March 15.