Weyerhaeuser deal could block access to thousands of acres of land, Lincoln County officials say

A company that’s previously sold lands to a pair of brothers known for closing public access to thousands of acres of lands across the West is the apparent buyer of about 630,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser Company lands in Montana.

The holdings amount to a huge swath of land from the west edge of Kalispell to Libby.

A “disaster,” is how Lincoln County Commissioner Mark Peck described the potential sale during a meeting earlier this week.

Weyerhaeuser declined to name a buyer, but Peck, chair of the board of county commissioners, said Georgia-based Southern Pine Plantations is purchasing the property. The company is a real estate, rather than timber, business, he said.

Peck worries Southern Pine Plantations will resell the vast tract of land to private owners, who will restrict or cut off access to the property. The company previously bought and then sold land to brothers and fracking magnates Dan and Farris Wilks in Idaho, he said.

An article in The New York Times earlier this year described the brothers as becoming “a symbol of the out-of-touch owner” in Idaho.

“In Idaho, as their property has expanded, the brothers have shuttered trails and hired armed guards to patrol their acres, blocking and stymying access not only to their private property, but also to some publicly owned areas. This has drawn ire from everyday Idahoans who have hiked and hunted in those hills for generations,” reported Times correspondent Julie Turkewitz.

The same could happen in Montana.

Weyerhaeuser announced the pending land deal Dec. 17. It stands to receive $145 million in cash for the sale. Company officials expect the deal to be completed in the second quarter of 2020.

The vast swath of land includes portions of Flathead, Lake and Sanders counties as well as much of the woodland southwest of Libby in Lincoln County, said Peck, chair of the board of commissioners. Most of it was originally given as land grants to the railroad companies, he said.

Peck leveled his blunt assessment of the sale during the board of commissioner’s Dec. 18 meeting.

Weyerhaeuser Company officials described the move in a press release as “a strategic realignment.” The company owns about 12 million acres of timberland across the country.

“The sale of our Montana acreage is part of our ongoing effort to strategically optimize our timberland portfolio,” said Devin Stockfish, Weyerhaeuser president and CEO, in a statement. “The transaction includes a diverse mix of softwood species and an existing 110,000-acre conservation easement which preserves public access in perpetuity.”

Weyerhaeuser currently has 598,000 acres of land under the state block management program. The program allows public hunting and fishing access and in return, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks game wardens patrol the property and investigate complaints, explained FWP Region 1 spokesman Dillon Tabish.

But the block management agreement, which is renewed on an annual basis, expires in May. That’s the same time Weyerhaeuser has said this land deal will close.

“If we lose access, it will create a significant blow to the hunting and fishing heritage in Montana,” Tabish said Friday.

Tabish said generations of sportsmen have been hunting on those lands. He said FWP had been negotiating an easement of about 7,000 acres of lands near the Lost Trail Wildlife Refuge prior to the sale announcement. Now that deal is in doubt.

The sale also potentially blocks Stimson Lumber Co. from continuing to buy up property around the county, Peck said. That would end the county commissioners’ hopes of seeing a new mill open up in the Libby area.

County Commissioner Jerry Bennett said that when he first got wind of the sale, he hoped it was Stimson buying up the land. The announcement came as a surprise to county commissioners and Stimson officials alike, Peck said.

“This is a threat to our economy, a threat to our heritage,” Peck said. “I’m a capitalist, but capitalism has to have a conscience.”

While Weyerhaeuser officials said they planned to keep their trio of manufacturing facilities in Montana running, Peck does not believe it. There is no way to keep them operating cut off from timberland, he said.

Given that the land sale is private, local officials only have so much leverage. Peck said he hopes to exert political pressure to convince Weyerhaeuser to reconsider the sale. He urged county residents to call him to discuss how to sway the company, which generated $7.5 billion in revenue in 2018.

About 111,000 acres of the sale would continue to have public access, even if the remainder becomes private and access is cut off.

The Thompson-Fisher River easement was negotiated several years ago between then owner Plum Creek and FWP. That easement keeps the land in that drainage from being subdivided. It also ensures public access.

But that would still leave about 519,000 acres in limbo.

Weyerhaeuser merged with Plum Creek in 2016. Shortly after that merger, the company shut down the plywood plant, planer and the sawmill in Columbia Falls. All told, more than 200 people lost their jobs. Today, the company runs a medium density fiberboard plant in Columbia Falls and a plywood and dimension lumber mill in Evergreen.

The company claims the land sale will have no impact on the mills. They employ more than 500 people locally.