PUBLIC LANDS: BLM ditches deal that would have opened 50,000 acres of Mont. monument
Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Wednesday, August 20, 2014
The Bureau of Land Management is abandoning a much-debated land exchange with a private ranch owner that would open up public access to more than 50,000 acres in central Montana's Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.
Instead, BLM will go back to the drawing board to come up with a solution that restores access to the popular elk hunting area that remains accessible today only by helicopter, horseback or hiking.
The proposal involved the exchange of about 5,200 acres of private land in the N-Bar ranch south of Lewistown, Mont., and was first broached by Farris and Dan Wilks, the brothers who own and operate the ranch through Wilks Ranch Montana Ltd.
BLM announced in March that it would review the proposed exchange in an effort to restore access to the Bullwhacker Coulee area in Blaine County in the wake of a legal ruling that determined a portion of Bullwhacker Road crossing private lands is a private road, and off-limits to trucks and other motorized transportation (E&ENews PM, March 18).
BLM had been working on an environmental assessment of the land exchange proposal that involved swapping 12 landlocked inholdings within the national monument. The exchange would have eliminated the need to build a new road through the national monument, while benefiting the private landowners by consolidating ranch operations.
But the idea met some stiff public resistance, said Brad Purdy, a BLM spokesman in Billings, Mont.
"There just didn't seem to be any plan that was going to be acceptable to the public up there," Purdy said.
BLM officials will now travel to the remote backcountry area to review future options, most likely identifying a suitable route to build a road through the national monument that allows motorized access to the area, he said.
"Public access to public lands continues to be one of our State Director's top priorities," Stan Benes, BLM's central Montana district manager, said in a statement.
BLM by the end of the year will propose alternatives to the public for review. The agency would then conduct an environmental assessment to evaluate any proposed road involving public lands in the national monument.
"This is obviously something that has been going on for quite some time, and it's something BLM wants to have resolved. So I think this is something that BLM would want to move on quickly," Purdy said.
Meanwhile, the Wilks brothers have set up a website promoting a revised land exchange proposal that does not include 2,700 acres of BLM land in the elk-rich hunting grounds Durfee Hills, which had raised objections from some elk hunters, the agency said.
The new proposal calls for exchanging 4,003 acres of land in the ranch for about 2,800 acres of BLM land.
The exchange proposal, according to the Wilks brothers' website, "is nothing but a win for the public, the state and federal land management agencies, and a private ranching operation."
