Land deal consolidates Swan Valley forest

A $5.8 million real estate deal in the Swan Valley will help consolidate lands The Nature Conservancy acquired four years ago as part of the statewide Montana Legacy Project.

In a deal that closed Dec. 27, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation purchased 14,000 acres of land from the Swan Valley Conservation Project, a multi-resource management project overseen by the Swan Liaison Team, which is composed of DNRC, The Nature Conservancy and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

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

In 2008, The Nature Conservancy bought 44,821 acres in the Swan Valley from Plum Creek. The deal was part of a larger deal that transferred 310,000 acres of Plum Creek land around Montana to the Montana Legacy Project.

Interspersed with the Swan Valley property was state school trust land managed by DNRC. The December sale brings all the land under DNRC management.

FWP held conservation easements on the Swan Valley land for the past four years in anticipation of the land eventually being transferred to DNRC, 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 DNRC could afford to buy it,” Wood said.

The easements were put in place to protect important bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout habitat and to protect riparian areas. The easements protect the land from subdivision or development, restrict cutting of aspen and cottonwood trees, place permanent buffers in key bull trout reproduction areas, and guarantee public access.

FWP will continue to maintain their conservation easements without having management authority over the land. DNRC can manage the land for timber resources, a key revenue source for DNRC and the state school trust, DNRC’s Dan Roberson said.

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