With Plum Creek merger come concerns about future land access

The Plum Creek merger with Weyerhaeuser brings with it future worries about land access in Montana. Currently Plum Creek allows free use of its lands with some limitations, but Weyerhaeuser often either leases the lands it owns or charges a permit to recreate on those lands.

Permits vary from property to property, with some as low as $50 annually to others as high as $550 for motorized access for a month.

The company limits the number of permits on tracts of land. Based on its website, some sell out, others do not.

It also offers hunting leases on tracts of land.

Plum Creek owns 770,000 acres of land in Montana, most of it is the Salish Range from Kalispell to Libby, currently a free hunting and camping ground for thousands of people.

There is some ground that will have public access in perpetuity. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks negotiated a conservation easement with Plum Creek a few years ago that assures public access to 142,000 acres in the Thompson and Fisher rivers, noted Alan Wood, of Montana, Fish, Wildlife and Parks.  

Whether Weyerhaeuser will lease lands post merger remains to be seen, but based on its track record, the company clearly is looking to extract as much value from its lands as possible. Permits and leases are another revenue source.

“We’re lucky here (in Northwest Montana),” Wood noted.

Other critical Plum Creek lands have also been acquired in recent years. The Montana Legacy Project, brokered by the Nature Conservancy, acquired 310,000 acres of Plum Creek lands in 2008 and more recently, the Conservancy acquired an additional 117,000 acres in the lower end of the Swan Valley and the Blackfoot Valley.

Much of the Legacy land went to the Forest Service or the state of Montana. The Conservancy has kept the Blackfoot lands open to public use as well.

One critical piece of legislation to continue purchasing easements and lands in Montana is the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Wood noted. The federal fund uses tax revenue from off-shore oil and gas leases to fund projects like conservation easements, but the measure has expired. Some in Congress want to gut the measure, but Montana’s congressional delegation all support renewal of the bill. To date, however, the fund remains in limbo.