Land Trust News

by Glenn Marx, MALT Executive Director

     It’s officially official: The MALT board of directors has finalized the MALT executive director job description, and an active search for MALT’s next executive director is now underway. I’ll be retiring within a March 2022 timeframe and someone new, with new ideas and new energy, will serve the land trust community as MALT executive director.

     I’ve had the honor, and the good fortune, to have this job since 2006, after I’d interviewed with a MALT hiring committee consisting of (at the time) Bill Long, MLR; Andy Baur, PPLT; Wendy Ninteman, FVLT; and Paul Sihler, HOTR. I was hired under an informal two-year agreement that was never formalized. As long as MALT kept paying me I kept showing up for work, and here we are, 15 years later. I’ll be riding off into the sunset and MALT will have a terrific opportunity to work with a new executive director on a new vision, and new creative ways to serve the MALT membership with new and perhaps more youthful enthusiasm.

The position is now listed on MALT’s website.

      Great things are going on in the Montana land trust community. For example, take a look at Flathead Land Trust: FLT’s major summer fundraising event is coming up live and in-person on August 19, FLT is a participant in the popular Great Fish Community Challenge, a major FLT partnership effort—Bad Rock Canyon Conservation Project—recently received a $15,000 donation from the Whitefish Community Foundation, FLT just led a successful tour of its Stillwater Conservation Easement project and its Somers Beach project is progressing. 

     Wow. 

     “We are so excited and grateful to the Whitefish Community Foundation for this grant,” Flathead Land Trust executive director Paul Travis said in a Flathead Beacon article. “The proposed Bad Rock Canyon Wildlife Management Area will protect a critical piece of wildlife habitat along the Flathead River and secure  public access to a wild place right on the doorstep of Columbia Falls.”

     A total of 61 Flathead area nonprofits were selected by the Whitefish Community Foundation for the Great Fish Community Challenge. The event features an August 5 launch party. Since 2015, the Great Fish Community Challenge has raised more than $13 million for more than 70 local nonprofit organizations. In addition to awarding a percentage match on the first $20,000 raised by each organization, the Whitefish Community Foundation awards thousands of dollars in incentive grants throughout the campaign.

     FLT is also hosting The Land Affair, the land trust’s annual summer fundraising event, at 6:00 PM on August 19. The event will be held at the Snowline Acres Ashley Creek Venue and features reggae music, locally-sourced appetizers, local beer and wine, all culminated with a live paddle raise.  

     A Kalispell Daily Inter Lake reporter joined FLT for a tour of its 1,100-acre Stillwater Conservation Easement, a collaborative project involving The Trust for Public Land, Stoltze Land & Lumber, and a previous conservation-minded  landowner on forested land about 18 miles north of Whitefish. 

     “It’s one of the last pieces of private land in that area,” FLT’s Paul Travis said at the time the deal was closed. “The conservation easement protects open space, public access and wildlife habitat while also allowing for sustainable timber management.”

Photo: Stillwater tour.

Five Valleys Land Trust is very pleased to report it has opened a new trail on Mount Dean Stone. From the Five Valleys website: The City of Missoula, Five Valleys and the Mount Dean Stone Committee partners are excited to announce that the nicknamed High, Wide and Handsome Trail on Mount Dean Stone is now open to the public! This milestone is the culmination of years of listening to community needs and working with private landowners, neighbors, the City of Missoula, and the Mount Dean Stone Committee to help create Missoula’s newest trail corridor and open space vista.

     The Nature Conservancy in Montana added some helpful updated information on its website about the importance of forest management, and forest use by recreationists, with links to other current forest management information.

     Montana TNC is a major forest landowner in western Montana, and an advisory on TNC’s website reads: This summer we expect to see huge numbers of people enjoying Montana’s outdoors, including visits to our TNC lands. With so many of us out there, please remember to douse your campfires, pack out trash, stay on marked trails and leave no trace that you were there. Folks accessing TNC’s lands are also encouraged to review TNC’s Forest Lands – Open Lands Policy. 

     That’s wise advice, given the number of wildfires burning in Montana, and the high percentage of them that have been human-caused. 

     TNC’s Summer 2021 Montana Forest Newsletter is full of interesting information about ongoing TNC forest management actions. Topics such as biochar, recreating responsibly, a design sprint assessment of 40,000 acres nearly Seeley Lake, a 2021 update on TNC goals for forest land transfers, a report on local land transactions in 2020, and land management partnerships to help restore camas to TNC forestlands.

Dave Hanna / TNC Photo Blackfoot / Clearwater

Flathead Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land, Stoltze Land & Lumber and a cooperative landowner partner to produce 1,100 acres of wildlife conservation, public access and sustainable timber production north of Whitefish.  Flathead Land Trust and Stoltze recently led local tours of the property, which is protected by a conservation easement.

       Ten outdoor recreation groups working in the Gallatin County area and beyond — including Gallatin Valley Land Trust— have teamed up to launch “Outside Kind”, a campaign designed to “share best practices, principles and tips for enjoying the outdoors together.” 

     The effort reflects the growing awareness from several outdoor recreation and nature organizations that community and nature trails are seeing increased use and in some cases increasing conflicts. 

     “For years, and particularly in the last year and half, we’ve seen growing pressure on the trails throughout our region. This alliance reminds us that through kindness and respect for one-another, we can all enjoy our shared outdoor spaces, regardless of whether we like to hike, run or bike the trails,” says Chet Work, executive director at the Gallatin Valley Land Trust. 

     The primary goal of Outside Kind is to share best practices, principles and tips for enjoying the outdoors together. Whether you wish to encourage your friends and family or visiting guests to hike kind, ride kind, ski kind, wag kind, etc., Outside Kind offers the community consistent and clear guidelines around outdoor activities and positive local ethics. 

The Montana Association of Land Trusts will be celebrating National Forest Week during the next five days. Forest health is incredibly important to Montana’s economic strength, recreation opportunities, wildlife habitat and much more.

      Conservation easements were the main topic, and Kendall Van Dyk of the Montana Land Reliance was the main guest, on a recent episode of the Montana Ag Live show on Montana PBS. 

      Professor emeritus Jack Riesselman of Montana State University served as host of the show, and other panelists in addition to Van Dyk were Mary Burrows, MSU Extension Plant Pathologist; Dan Bigelow, MSU Extension Resource Agricultural Economist; and Mac Burgess, with MSU’s Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology department. The show featured opportunities for call-in questions and Van Dyk fielded the most questions, with conservation easement topics including perpetuity, conservation easement terms and restrictions, purpose of conservation easements, landowner motivations for easement creation, federal and state easement programs and more. 

Screenshot: Riesselman (left) and Van Dyk

     Bitter Root Land Trust’s “Keep It Bitterroot” campaign is all about the present, and addressing concerns now to improve the future. A featured article in the Ravalli Republic outlines the campaign, which is a direct response to current and dramatic population pressures in the Bitterroot and the value of maintaining the valley’s agricultural, recreational and open land heritage. 

     From the article: “People have realized that this is one of the best places in the world to live, but that rapid growth puts a real stress on our way of life and all the things that make this place so incredible and such a wonderful place to live,” said Bitter Land Trust executive director Gavin Ricklefs. “At some level right now, it feels like conservation in the valley is a race against time.”

     Lauren Rennaker, the trust’s development director, said the “Keep it Bitterroot” fundraising campaign is driven by the fact that families are asking for help in conserving their land.

     “We have landowners who are seeing all this change and realizing that they want to protect their land before it’s too late,” Rennaker said. “They are coming to us and saying we are ready to do this. Right now, we have a couple of dozen landowners who are interested in conserving their land.”

     “Keep it Bitterroot means protecting our natural environment, but also our small town Montana lifestyle as well,” said Bryan Dufresne, a Darby teacher and land trust Next Generation committee member. “We want to continue to enjoy the very reason we live here for years to come.”  Check out the Keep It Bitterroot video here.