Montana’s Blackfoot Valley, pictured here, is considered

“the cradle of Montana conservation easements.” The

first one in the state was installed there and now much
of the river and the surrounding valley are protected from
development.

PHOTO BY JASON SAVAGE

26
 KEEPING IT HEALTHY
Montana is famous for its open spaces, most of which are
privately owned. We’re losing some, preserving some.

BY SCOT T McMILLION

M O N TA N A Q U A R T E R LY 27
 I
n Montana, we spend a lot of time talking about
public land: how to manage it, who should use it
and how they should travel on it. We even argue over
whether we should keep it public or just sell it off.

Montana’s abundant big-game herds, like these elk, depend on private lands for survival.

PHOTO BY JOHN ZUMPANO

28
 The disputes go on and on. Every timber sale is a battle
and brings a lawsuit, it seems. How much land is enough for
grizzlies and wolverines and lynx? Can sage grouse coexist
with oil wells? How many elk are enough? How many coyotes
are too many? Wolves? What’s the difference between wild-
land and Wilderness? And what about fire? Even just access-
ing our public land can stir up a fight.
These are important discussions, of course. But let’s not
forget that 70 percent of our state is private land. If we care
about clean air and water, wildlife habitat, vistas unpimpled
by development, we need to care about private land. It totals
65 million acres in Montana and it contains some of the most
important habitat: good water, winter range, and the land-
scapes most of us relish every day.
The private estate is changing steadily and often without
much controversy. Whether it’s good or bad depends on your
perspective. Over the past 40 years, landowners have willingly
halted development on 2.6 million acres of their own ground,
M O N TA N A Q U A R T E R LY 29
Homes constructed in Montana: 1980 map vs. 2016 map
It’s the same amount of space, but a lot more people are building homes in it these days.
using legal instruments that will last as long as we have courts
and laws and a respect for contracts in this country. Yet over
the same timeframe an estimated 2 million acres have been
chopped up into housing tracts, mostly in parcels of 5 acres or
more, and largely in our most populous counties.
So far, the protectors are outrunning the developers, at
least in terms of acreage. But the race is far from over. Many
things could change.
A tool both complicated and precise
Housing development isn’t hard to understand. More and
more people are living in Montana, and almost everybody
wants a roof over their head. So they build or buy homes.
Much of it occurs on fertile agricultural land.
Banning development is a little more complicated. Most
often, it uses a tool called a conservation easement.
In essence, a conservation easement restricts the land-
owner’s property deed so the land can’t be subdivided or
extensively developed. In most cases, traditional uses such as
agriculture or sustainable logging can continue. So can hunt-
ing and fishing, maybe some mineral development. The prop-
erty’s tax status doesn’t change.
The leases are designed to last “in perpetuity,” which is a
long time. A legal entity other than the landowner holds the
lease and is required by law to enforce it, becoming some-
thing of a partner for whoever owns the land. Violations of
30
SOURCE: Headwaters Economics
the easements rules are rare, according to Andy Dana, a
Bozeman lawyer who specializes in conservation easements
around the West.
His parents put a conservation easement on their Paradise
Valley property south of Livingston in 1981. It was the first
along the Yellowstone River and includes three miles of
riverfront, plus a spring creek where trout spawn. And it will
remain undeveloped, no matter how many new houses sprout
all around it, no matter how high real estate prices climb.
In his family’s case, that means traditional agriculture
remains; cattle graze, hay grows. One house is rented out.
That’s about it, in terms of economic activity.
A conservation easement is “the most restrictive instru-
ment you can put on your property,” Dana said. And that’s just
fine with him and his brothers, who co-own the ranch. They
like it the way it is and want to keep it that way.
“It’s something the family has been unified on,” he said.
His parents bought the place in the 1960s from an old
Park County family and, coming from the East Coast, saw
development pressure building on the horizon. They loved the
outdoors, agriculture and open space. So they made sure their
chunk of it would be protected.
The public benefits as well.
Because of the easement, river floaters and other passersby
can enjoy a lush riverine landscape in a valley that is growing
rapidly. And because there isn’t much human activity there
“the moose can calve and the swans can nest,” Dana said.
Land rich, cash poor
Conservation easements became possible in Montana in 1975,
when the state legislature enacted a bill to allow and regu-
late them. The first easement was installed the next year in the
Blackfoot Valley east of Missoula, where people saw development
coming and wanted to protect land beyond their own lifetimes.
The idea spread from there, and easements have been
installed in 51 of Montana’s 56 counties.
In the early years, most easements were donated by the
landowners, like the Danas, who wanted to protect the land
and keep it productive for people and wildlife.
While protecting wildlife and open space and providing
ecosystem services (see sidebar, Page 32) is the primary goal for buying more hay land, increasing his beef production.
many people, there can be substantial financial payoffs as well.
Since a conservation easement bans development in perpe-
tuity, landowners give up a substantial amount of real estate
value because they lose the ability to subdivide, as do their
heirs or other future owners.
If a landowner donates all or part of an easement to a
government entity or a nonprofit land trust (there are a number
of such organizations in Montana), he or she becomes eligible
Environmental Adventure Company
Montana to Havana!
Find your own Cuba
l Couples, families, groups
l Departures year-round
l Call 406-222-5660 to begin!
info@eactours.com www.eactours.com
“One of the best wildlife tour
companies in North America”
NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION Culture!
Nature!
Wildlife!
Music!
for tax deductions that can be used over 16 years. That can
reduce or eliminate income taxes for years, if the donor has
enough income. But many landowners don’t have enough
income to take advantage of the tax breaks.
So the easements can be sold for cash, either to a land trust or
to a government entity. Landowners can then use that money to
pay off debt, expand their farm or ranch, or invest as they see fit.
Rock Ringling, who recently retired from the Montana
Land Reliance (MLR), where he negotiated conservation ease-
ments for 29 years, pointed to an eastern Montana example.
There, one rancher, whose family has ranched for genera-
tions, sold a pair of easements to MLR. The first sale paid
off debt and the second allowed him to expand his ranch by
“He made a better ranch out of it,” Ringling said. Plus, the
easements benefit wildlife and protect open space, the family
ranch can pass more easily to the next generation, and local
government isn’t burdened by rural subdivisions, which rarely
produce enough tax money to offset the services they require.
“A cow doesn’t call the sheriff,” Ringling noted. Nor does
it need the school buses, snowplows or road maintenance that
local governments provide.
Montana has more land under
conservation easement than Idaho,
Wyoming and the Dakotas combined.
“It’s a lot for a western state, given the
politics of Montana,” Ringling said. He
attributes Montana’s success to the state’s
comparatively early start in the conser-
vation easement business, a good law to
work with, and considerable expertise on
the ground. Conservation easements are
complicated transactions and each one is
tailored to an individual property.
Administering and enforcing them
means following a “thick workbook
of standards and practices that must
be followed,” Dana said. If a land
trust doesn’t make sure the rules are
followed, it can run into trouble with the
Internal Revenue Service.
Montana’s program also got a big boost
“when public money showed up” over the
past couple decades, said Ringling, whose
group has helped protect a million acres
of private land in Montana.
Other big players include the Nature
Conservancy (TNC), which buys or
accepts donated conservation easements.
M O N TA N A Q U A R T E R LY 31

SOURCE: Montana Department of Administration
Show me the money: Putting a dollar value on nature’s work
Open land provides food. Meat and wheat. Fruit and
vegetables. But it also provides what scientists call ecosys-
tem services. And the more intensively the land is devel-
oped, the fewer of those services it can provide. A forest
provides more services than a field. And a field provides
more than a subdivision.
The services come in many forms: carbon sequestra-
tion, pollination, air pollution removal, erosion control,
water quality protection, healthier people. Increasingly,
economists are trying to put a dollar value on those
services.
The Montana Land Reliance, which holds conserva-
tion easements on 1 million acres in Montana, calculates
the services on that land are worth $317 million. That’s not
all cash, though. Much of it comes in the form of avoided
expenses.
“The Yellowstone River could be more polluted than it
is,” without conservation easements protecting its banks
and tributaries, noted Matt Bell, a geographic specialist
for MLR. And that would boost costs for downstream cities
that use it for drinking water. “What would the cost be of
that [water] filtration?”
There are examples.
New York City paid farmers $1 billion to keep animal
waste and farm fertilizer out of upstream water sources
and avoided the need for a new $6 billion water filtration
plant plus at least $300 million more in annual operating
costs, according to a 2012 paper by Environmental Health
Perspectives.
Valuing nature’s services remains an emerging field of
32
Conservation easements
in Montana as of March 2018
Private land trusts/conservation groups
State/county/city government
Federal/tribal government
economics, but it’s becoming more sophisticated, the paper
notes.
In Costa Rica, coffee farms near unharvested forests
that host bees and other pollinators saw much better crops,
the paper said. In Vietnam, spending $1.1 million to plant
coastal mangroves saved $7.3 million annually that would
have been spent on dikes to prevent flooding.
In Montana, forests and wetlands provide the most
ecosystem services per acre, which is calculated by study-
ing 30-square-meter grids. Of the land under MLR ease-
ment, only 26 percent falls into those categories. Yet they
provide 70 percent of the value of ecosystem services,
which include carbon sequestration, biodiversity, water
quality and water storage.
Ecosystem services don’t disappear with development,
Bell said, but they do get reduced. In the Gallatin Valley,
he said, ranch land converted to rural subdivisions loses
about 50 percent of those services. And millions of acres of
private land in the state provide ecosystem services without
conservation easements.
But a conservation easement ensures those services will
continue to be produced long into the future.
The hardest thing to measure is probably the aesthetic
value of open land. But it jingles some cash registers none-
theless. The state of Montana promotes open spaces in its
tourism campaigns. And real estate agents frequently use
the term “adjoins conservation property.”
As with other commodities, when open space shrinks,
its value increases.
—Scott McMillion
 “They believe in conservation. They believe in agriculture.
A conservation easement helps them achieve those goals.”

Although it is a huge organization that operates worldwide,

in high-growth parts of the state have their own programs as
“The Conservancy can’t do it all,” said Dave Carr, who has
well, usually financed by property tax hikes.
worked for TNC in Montana since 1989. Much of his work has
“It’s a taxpayer subsidy of open space,” Dana observed.
been along the Rocky Mountain Front, where TNC owns someEach program is unique. The Farm Bill programs empha-
key conservation property. size protecting agriculture and making it sustainable, the state
“There was a lot of suspicion about conservation easements
program often emphasizes hunting access and other recreation,
and a lot of fear about losing control” of property, Carr said.
and county programs focus on protecting open space and habi-
But the availability of cash payments made the easements a
tat in rapidly growing counties such as Gallatin and Missoula.
more attractive option. The future holds few assurances, however. Proposals
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is “incred-
currently floating in Washington, D.C., would direct LWCF
ibly important,” Carr said. That fund, which is financed by
money to other uses, such as infrastructure in the national
offshore oil and gas development, allows the federal government
parks. The Farm Bill is a perennial political football.
to buy conservation easements on threatened property. The land
And the Habitat Montana program comes under periodic
is protected but it remains in private hands and on the tax rolls.
attack in Helena. Local open space bonds, which fund
The federal Farm Bill also provides money for conservation
conservation easements, come up for renewal periodically
easements, as does the Habitat Montana program, which is
and compete for tax money with other causes.
funded by hunting and fishing license money. Some counties
Montana has about 2,000 conservation easements, held by
about 30 entities, either nonprofit or
governmental, said Glenn Marx, direc-
tor of the Montana Association of Land

Connecting Landscapes – Protecting Wildlife
The Vital Ground Foundation is a Montana-based land
trust conserving and connecting habitat for grizzly bears
and other wildlife. Learn more at www.VitalGround.org
or info@vitalground.org. Phone: 406.549.8650.
Trusts. Each of them has been negotiated
through a willing buyer/willing seller rela-
tionship. Marx stressed that conservation
easements don’t make sense for every-
body. Decision factors include commod-
ity prices, estate taxes, tax and cash flow
situations, and “simple altruism.”
“They want to respect the tradition
and legacy of that property,” he said of
landowners seeking easements. “They
believe in conservation. They believe in
agriculture. A conservation easement
helps them achieve those goals.”
Financial tools can make that easier
to do so. But landowners can often find
simpler ways to profit from their property.
“If an owner only wants revenue,
they should look at other options,” Marx
said. “At its core, it’s a commitment to
lasting conservation.”
And so far, the owners of 2.8 million
acres—an area bigger than Yellowstone
National Park—have decided to make
that commitment.

M O N TA N A Q U A R T E R LY 33