Closed-Door Deal Could Open Land In Montana

Most are the second, third or even fourth homes of wealthy newcomers who have transformed the local economy -- 40 percent of income in Missoula County is now "unearned," from, say, dividends -- and typically visit only in the summer. In Antler Ridge, across Highway 93, Web cameras installed over bird nests and a bear den beam photos to a hedge fund partner who visits his 200 acres just a few times a year.

"He was actually in France when the bear left the den," said "remote wildlife viewing" contractor Ryan Alter, on his way to install a camera at an owl's nest. "So I sent him pictures on his BlackBerry."

"I wanted to own land out there because I was always very interested in the concept of restoration, conservation," Paul Gurinas, the hedge fund partner, said by phone from Chicago. "The fact that it's almost become kind of a housing subdivision, that isn't what I was looking for. I guess I wish I had bought the whole thing up, and then I wouldn't have to worry about it."

That same impulse drives a different kind of land deal in the area: The buyers are the Nature Conservancy and other organizations that purchase desirable private land to preserve it. Since 2000, the groups have paid Plum Creek market rates to secure 280,000 sensitive acres in Montana alone.

Another 320,000 acres are being preserved under a provision that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) forced into the farm bill, which survived President Bush's veto. The measure includes $250 million to back bonds to buy Plum Creek lands that otherwise might be developed.

"This is like the last big, wild, intact landscape in the Lower 48," said Eric Love of the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group that with the Nature Conservancy announced the $510 million purchase on Monday. "If these lands are going to be sold, someone is going to buy them. The question is, who?"

Plum Creek said it has sold only 3,000 of its Montana acres to developers in the past five years, and it expects to sell even less in the next five, the company's president, Rick Holley, wrote in a recent op-ed in the Missoulian newspaper. But critics point out that its calculations may shift with the real estate market.

A decade ago, while repairing an image as the "Darth Vader of the timber industry," as one congressman put it, the company showcased good-forestry practices on a hillside above Flathead Lake.

That parcel is now Eagle's Crest, a gated subdivision with its own airstrip and lots on offer for $100,000 an acre. Remote corners of Swan Valley are selling for $11,000 an acre, with broker inquiries arriving from Europe. By comparison, the "net present value per acre of forest" runs at most $500, said Larry Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

"It's a pretty straightforward proposition: The region's economy is moving from extraction to amenities, and you would expect the same thing to happen with its largest landowner," Swanson said.

"It's a tough deal. Change is hard, and this is pretty fundamental change. But what's happening here is perfectly understandable."

Missoula County officials say their objection is not to change, which traditionally rural jurisdictions have struggled to manage, but to being blindsided by Rey's announcement of a far-reaching change negotiated in secret.

Plum Creek owns 57 percent of Missoula County's private land, a posture that under state law gives it veto power over any zoning. Over the decades that the Forest Service enforced limits on logging roads, the county came to regard federal policy as a firebreak against development.

"All these years, we've been told those roads are not for residential use," said Jean Curtiss, who chairs the county commission. "These are logging roads. They're for timber management."

If the deal goes into effect, the county stands to lose money in providing services such as snow plowing and ambulances to remote new developments. "You're looking at a real nightmare scenario in managing wildfires," Rasker said. "And you're going to have access issues: If these now become gated subdivisions, it's going to be harder for people to go hunt and fish, and that's pretty important to people in Montana."