DNRC stitches up land management in Swan

After nearly four years of planning and waiting, the Montana Department of Natural Resources closed a $5.8 million deal to purchase 14,000 acres of Swan Valley land from the Nature Conservancy on Dec. 27.

The 14,000 acres is part of the Swan Valley Conservation Project, a multi-resource management plan overseen by the Swan Liaison Team — Montana, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the DNRC and The Nature Conservancy. The group oversees management of Swan Valley conservation easements that FWP holds on 16,553 acres of DNRC and Nature Conservancy land.

The DNRC manages state school trust land in the Swan that was interspersed with land the Nature Conservancy purchased from Plum Creek as part of the Legacy Project in 2008. The December sale brings all the land under management by the DNRC.

“It was literally a checkerboard,” western Montana program director of the Nature Conservancy, Caroline Bird said. “We had a section, they had a section.”

In 2008 the Nature Conservancy bought 44,821 acres in the Swan Range from Plum Creek as part of a larger land deal with the lumber company.

The deal transferred 310,000 acres throughout Montana to the legacy project in order to protect the timber land from being subdivided into real estate land. Since that time, as money becomes available, the land is sold to state agencies like the Forest Service and the DNRC to ensure that the land is still accessible to the public.

When FWP purchased conservation easements on the land in the Swan Valley, it was done in anticipation of the DNRC eventually purchasing the land, according to FWP Wildlife Mitigation Coordinator Alan Wood.

“A conservation easement was a way for us to protect future development and also reduce the value of the land so that the DNRC could afford to buy it,” Wood said.

Wood also said the DNRC was at the negotiation table from the start, with the Nature Conservancy and FWP as they hashed out the terms of the conservation easements put into place over the last four years.

That way the “easement would mesh nicely with how they managed their current land ownership,” Wood said.

FWP will continue to maintain their conservation easements without having management authority over the land.

The easements were put into place to protect important bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout habitat and protect riparian areas. Some of the important terms of the easement are; there is no subdivision or development allowed on the land, cutting aspen and cottonwood is restricted, and they place permanent buffers in key bull trout reproduction areas and guarantee public access.

The land can still be managed for timber resources by the DNRC. Timber is a key revenue source for the DNRC and the state school trust said the DNRC’s Dan Roberson.

“Our primary income here is through timber harvest, but keep in mind the forest down there are fairly young forests, so the opportunity to do that is going to be limited,” Roberson said. “It’s going to prove a value into the future.”