A rancher, Colin Phipps, donated an easement on 2,900 acres along Dupuyer Creek to the Missoula-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
The creek corridor, which is home to elk, grizzly bears, moose, wolverines, deer and other wildlife, abuts national forest land and has been identified by state wildlife biologists as some of the most vital and threatened habitat in the state.
Phipps said he donated the easement to protect the land from being divided into 10- and 20-acre ranchettes and to preserve it as a traditional working ranch.
Across the West, a growing number of family ranchers and farmers are signing conservation easements, giving up some development rights in exchange for tax benefits.
Phipps' easement allows him to continue traditional ranching activities, including grazing, farming and logging, and to build a few homes on the property.
He is working with the Natural Resource Conservation Service and a ranch consulting firm to create a grazing management and wildlife enhancement plan for the land.
The property will not be open to the public because it will remain a working ranch, but the public will benefit from the easement by the preservation of scenic vistas, open space and wildlife habitat, Mueller said.
Phipps also has placed conservation easements on land he owns in Florida and Massachusetts.
He said if his family does eventually sell the Dupuyer Creek ranch, the easement will “ensure as much as possible that the property will be affordable, so that ranchers that have lived in the area for generations will have the means and opportunity to purchase it.”
In 2007, the Elk Foundation completed the most successful year in its history by protecting or enhancing wildlife habitat on more than 366,000 acres nationwide. That included nearly 51,300 acres in Montana.
Since the foundation was established in 1984, it has protected or enhanced habitat on 5.3 million acres in the United States, including nearly 600,000 acres in Montana.
Those projects have a total value of $474 million, a figure that reflects the value of the protected land and the number of grants awarded for conservation programs, according to foundation records.
Most of the foundation's projects have involved stewardship programs, such as prescribed burns to enhance habitat, transplanting and managing elk, research on elk and their habitat, and natural resource and hunter education.
The Phipps family cattle ranch, in Teton County, is near the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park. It is adjacent to a Nature Conservancy easement on the Boone and Crockett Club's Theodore Roosevelt Ranch.
The Phipps ranch provides critical winter range for elk and mule deer, said Gary Olson, a wildlife biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
It also is key habitat for bears, cutthroat trout, grouse, waterfowl and other species in the northern Rocky Mountain ecosystem, Olson said.
Reporter John Cramer can be reached at johncramer@missoulian.com or at 1-800-366-7186.
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