Nature Conservancy buys 183 square miles in Montana

Nearly 183 square miles of western Montana timber land has been sold to The Nature Conservancy as part of a multistate deal valued at $134 million. The purchase is one of the largest land acquisition projects ever undertaken by the international conservation organization

The land sale was announced Monday in simultaneous news releases issued by both the Plum Creek Timber Co. and The Nature Conservancy.

"This project will ensure that the (crown of the continent's) grand mosaic will be conserved, securing this place as a hub for wide-ranging wildlife such as grizzly, whose survival depends on the ability to move, unobstructed, across hundreds of miles of wild lands in Montana, Idaho, and into Canada, and as a stronghold for the threatened Canada lynx," the Nature Conservancy's news release states.

"This is an important conservation project that recognizes the highest benefit these lands offer — protecting ecological values and helping to maintain public access," Plum Creek CEO Rick Holley said in a separate release. "We are pleased that we were able to work with The Nature Conservancy to conserve some of the nation's most important forest areas."

The land purchased by the Nature Conservancy in Montana extends from the Blackfoot River east of Missoula, north beyond Placid Lake along the western edge of the Clearwater River corridor. The Montana land was purchased concurrently with another 48,000 acres of Plum Creek Timber Co. land in Washington state, which runs nearly 25 miles along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains from Snoqualmie Pass toward Ellensburg.

The two-state land deal is collectively referred to as The Great Western Checkerboards Project. The acquisition of the land comes six years after the announcement a larger $490 million deal with Plum Creek involving the Nature Conservancy, The Trust for Public Land and several state and federal agencies to buy nearly 311,000 acres of commercial timberland in Montana. Taken together, the two projects fill in large gaps in a near continuous corridor of protected land stretching from the Canadian Rockies to central Wyoming.

"It links up the South Jocko Primitive Area with the wilderness areas in the Mission Mountains," the Montana state director of The Nature Conservancy, Richard Jeo, said. "This is really core habit for species security, breeding habitat and for wildlife movement."

According to Plum Creek spokeswoman Kate Tate, the property consists largely of lower production timberland located at relatively higher elevations with slower growing trees.

"It has been in timber production for many years under the ownership of Plum Creek," said Tate of the company's Clearwater River and Blackfoot River property complex. "At the same time they are greatly desired for other attributes that they offer. They lend themselves well to these kind of long-term conservation activities. We feel like we've had a strong history of partnering on conservation, and we're really pleased to partner with TNC on this conservation outcome."

Plum Creek Timber Company is one of the largest private land owners in the country, with 6.7 million acres of timberland concentrated primarily in the northern and southeastern United States. Tate said that the sale of approximately 165,000 acres of timberland in Montana and Washington should not be interpreted as a retraction of the company's commitment to timber production in Montana.

"We will continue to own 772,000 acres of land in Montana, so we're very committed to continued timber production in Montana."

The property will be acquired by The Nature Conservancy in two phases, the first closing in the fourth quarter of 2014 and the second closing by end of the first quarter of 2015. Jeo said The Nature Conservancy is still evaluating its options for the long-term management of its newly acquired lands.

"We're not exactly sure of the ultimate ownership of lots of this land," he said. "That will really be determined by how people can best use the place. Some big part of it might end up being working forest — after we do appropriate restoration and really let the forest rest for a while. It's been really worked heavily over the years and needs time to recover; but within the bounds of what's good for nature there's a lot of space to figure how do we really conserve and protect the place and at the same time still allow people to access it and use it."