Building a Public Lands Legacy at Lost Trail

Fish and Wildlife Service proposes conservation easement on 100,000 acres of prime hunting and timberland owned largely by Southern Pine Plantations

BY TRISTAN SCOTT // JUL 13, 2020

If the sale of a prized swath of Northwest Montana forestland to an out-of-state investment firm was cause for consternation earlier this year, then a new proposal to conserve much of that land for public access, wildlife habitat and sustainable timber management ought to be cause for celebration.

That’s the consensus of federal and state land and wildlife resource managers leading the effort to place 100,000 acres of prime hunting and timberland into conservation easements, protecting parcels in Flathead and Lincoln counties from private development in perpetuity while also ensuring continued access for hunters, anglers, hikers, skiers, berry-pickers, and other recreational users, as well as allowing the property to be sustainably managed for timber production.

The proposed project lands form a sprawling checkerboard of ownership flanking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Lost Trail National Wildlife Refuge near Marion. The lion’s share of the project area was recently purchased by Georgia-based Southern Pine Plantations (SPP), a real estate and timberland investment firm that paid $145 million in cash to the previous owner, Weyerhaeuser Co., in exchange for 630,000 acres, touching off rampant speculation among public land users in the region about whether the new guard might chop up the parcels and sell them for private development, supplanting trophy bucks and bulls with gated trophy homes.

The newly proposed Lost Trail Conservation Area would authorize the federal FWS to work with willing sellers like SPP, as well as smaller private owners, to acquire conservation easements on up to 100,000 acres within the defined 116,000-acre conservation area boundary… read more