Since
2006 the Forest Legacy Program has partnered with the Montana
Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and the Trust for Public
Land to help protect nearly 8,000 acres in Montana’s
Swan Valley. The Forest Legacy Program’s work
in the valley is an important conservation success but the
FLP is one partner among many. More than 13 organizations
are working together to protect “The Swan”. To
date they have permanently protected more than 60,000 acres.
Dale
Dufour
Located in the “crown” of the continental divide,
the North Swan River Valley in Northwestern Montana supports
a critical diversity of ecosystems. Flanked by the Bob Marshall
Wilderness to the east, Glacier National Park to the north,
the Mission Mountains Wilderness to the southwest and the
Flathead and Lolo National Forests on either side, the valley
anchors the most intact biological ecosystem remaining
in the lower 48 and provides some of the most important grizzly
bear habitat outside of Alaska. Development pressure and other
threats pose a tremendous risk to the forests, streams and
wetlands in this valley. Forest and land fragmentation threaten
to cut off migration routes for the bears and other animals,
diminish habitat for endangered bull trout and impede healthy
forest management for timber
products.
Karen Nichols
In the late 1990s,
the largest landowner in the valley, the timber company Plumb
Creek, started to divest and sell parcels of land to developers
and second home buyers as prices for real estate made land
more valuable than
the timber it supports. This fragmentation and sale of land
to several owners
threatened to permanently dismantle
large intact blocks of forest and wetland which are essential
for the wildlife; fragmentation also meant that many recreational
opportunities would be lost.
Swan Ecosystem Center
Plum Creek’s decision to sell most of its holdings in
the valley mobilized several groups to rally around conservation
efforts. The result was a multi-year community-driven, science-based
conservation strategy advanced by The Trust for Public Land,
Swan Ecosystem Center, Plumb Creek and various landowners,
foundations,
regional and national conservation organizations, local citizens,
and the State of Montana. The conservation strategy identified
key parcels which helped the group focus its efforts on the
most important lands in order to create a mosaic of protected
lands with multiple uses . Some protected areas are placed
in public ownership as state or federal lands, some are protected
with conservation easements held by land trusts. The objectives
of this collaborative effort include the preservation and
restoration of the valley's ecological integrity, the maintenance
of local forest-based economies, and to maintain public access
and recreational opportunities.
Swan Ecosystem Center
This
coalition of partners, working together to identify and protect
crucial linkages in the valley is an outstanding example of
how partnerships create conservation opportunities that would
otherwise not be
possible. Forest Legacy funding often helps leverage funding
and expertise from several other sources to bring critical
resources to the table. The landscape level, partnership driven
conservation work in the Swan Valley represents the type of
efforts the Forest Legacy Program is striving to support.
Swan Ecosystem Center
For more information about the Swan Valley ConservationPartnership
please visit their website at http://www.swanvalleyconservation.org/.
For more information about the Trust for Public Land, please
visit their website at http://www.tpl.org.
Strategic Prioirites of
the Forest Legacy Program
1.) Promote the strategic
conservation of private forests;
2.) Conserve private forests that provide environmental,
social and economic benefits to people and communites;
3.) Slow the conversion and fragmentation of environmentally
and economically significant forests; and
4.) Continually improve FLP business
practices.
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Where are the
Bears?
Satellite image of Grizzly Bear Movement credited
to Chris Servheen at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,Text credited
to The Trust for Public Land-Montana Chapter
This satellite image shows
a view looking up the Swan River Valley, northeast of Missoula,
Montana. Flathead Lake and the peaks of Glacier National Park
are to the north, at the top of the image. For years, scientists
assumed that the bears spent most of their time in the protected
wilderness in the high country. Beginning in 2000, however,
ten grizzly bears were outfitted with Global Positioning system
(GPS) collars. The results, represented by yellow lines tracing
the bears’ summer use of the valley over the next four
years, make clear that these grizzlies prefer the valley bottomlands.
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