Vanishing views

It was with some alarm that I took a drive around the better part of the valley the other day. Specifically, I was looking for a snowy owl that I had heard about, hoping to get a picture of it. But there were no signs of the owl.

The alarming part of the drive was the amount of sprawl. We, meaning us newspaper writers, often talk about the threat of sprawl in the valley.

Well, it's no longer a threat. We already have sprawled.

Places that were wide-open wheat fields just a few years ago are now subdivisions. Not just ordinary subdivisions either. Many of these homes are massive. Homes that I could only dream of affording.

Where are these folks coming from? More importantly, where do they work? a friend asked me last week. The mills aren't hiring, he noted. If anything, they're cutting back.

The short answer is they're coming from everywhere. Where they work seems not to matter as much anymore. The Internet has changed much of that.

But most, I'd dare say, have already made their money elsewhere, built up enough equity so that when they move here, a big house on two acres is, judging from their pocketbooks, affordable.

A guy like me gets irritated by this. Not because they're moving here or because they have a big old house.

No, I'm irritated because it's hard to make a good picture of sprawl. It just doesn't fit in with the mountains. Farms with cows and horses and chickens and old barns fit the landscape. Strip malls and trophy homes with tightly manicured lawns do not.

I am not against growth, and I am not against people building the homes they wish to live in. I have lived in places where government governed everything you did as a homeowner, and it is onerous at best.

But on the other hand, I think there are some things we can do in the valley to preserve the remaining farmland we have. We need some sort of an easement program-an incentive payment to farmers to keep their open spaces open. Under an easement, they can still farm the land and retain all ownership, but they can't subdivide it.

In short, you buy the development rights forever. I'm not talking about creating parks. I'm talking about keeping farmland and other open space open. It's that simple.

This sort of program here should be strictly voluntary.

The Flathead Land Trust floated the idea earlier this year of an open-space bond, but it went over like a lead balloon because it would have taxed all landowners.

There's just too many anti-easement folks out there to get something like that passed. Let's focus our energy on the folks who are willing to make a program work. Make a program that is completely voluntary. Raise funds through a check off program on property taxes or vehicle registrations.

Even a license plate idea has its merits. Gallatin County has an open-space license plate where funds are used for easement purposes. The plate is an attractive design, and more than a few drivers up here have the plates. They probably don't even realize what it's for.

The bottom line is we have to come up with something relatively quickly or what little we have left will be gone all too soon.

And I won't have to worry about looking for owls. They will have only rooftops to roost on.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.