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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.

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.