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Plum Creek executives recently toured newspaper offices around Montana in an attempt to assuage public concern about the company’s pending agreement with Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey for blanket rights-of-way through national forests to company lands for any purpose, mainly for subdivision and second-home development.

County commissions have expressed grave concerns about the deal because it will aid development in remote areas that would require taxpayer-funded services such as fire and police protection. The public is also concerned because the agreement could result in the company or its successors controlling access to potentially hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest and currently open company lands. Critically, the deal also could hinder the Forest Service’s obligation to reduce harm to wildlife, fish and water quality from its extensive road system and could undermine a habitat conservation plan Plum Creek negotiated nearly a decade ago with the federal government.

Now, in the face of congressional scrutiny of the deal, Plum Creek CEO Rick Holley has publicly declared the company wants to be “transparent” about its plans. He, like Rey, claims the deal only “clarifies” what they say are the company’s existing rights. He also says the public should not be concerned about the deal because the company contemplates developing only a small percentage of its holdings. Further, recent land and easement sales to conservation interests have reduced the amount of company land available for home development. Moreover, he adds, the economy has slowed land sales.

In the spirit of transparency, we also want to point out a few things. The deal is much more than a “clarification” of existing rights. A mere clarification wouldn’t have taken 18 months of secret negotiations to come to agreement. Until recently, the company has relied on its decades-old easement for access through public lands to its holdings for timber management purposes. Subdivision is a recent concept. Forest Service managers told the company as much and said easements for development purposes would have to be negotiated on a case by case basis, which prompted Plum Creek to go directly to Rey, the former timber industry lobbyist who oversees the agency.

Despite Holley’s assurances that only limited parcels will be developed, even after recent deals to sell lands to land trusts are complete, more than 600,000 acres of Plum Creek land in Montana will still be open for land sale or conversion. These include developable tracts around popular recreational destinations such as Placid Lake, Gold Creek in the lower Blackfoot and near Whitefish Lake. Many parcels on trout streams will still be mixed in a checkerboard with national forest land and available for sale to developers or homeowners who would effectively control access.

The rush to complete the deal forecloses fair consideration of other problems it poses, including its effect on the company’s native fish habitat conservation plan. Approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the plan allows the company to harm important habitat for bull trout and cutthroat trout as long as it offsets the harm by fixing eroding roads, removing road culverts or protecting habitat on key streams. Because Plum Creek isn’t providing specifics about what land will and will not be developed and what roads will be affected and how, it is difficult to know if dwindling fish species will be protected or if the company still deserves the legal insulation conferred by the habitat plan. Further, the Forest Service will have to guarantee access through national forest land to developed Plum Creek lands, which could give landowners special access rights unavailable to the public in cases where the agency needs to close roads seasonally to protect wildlife or reclaim them in order to reduce erosion or eliminate fish-blocking road crossings.

The deal’s potential to undermine the Plum Creek habitat conservation plan, by itself, deserves more scrutiny. We need to know whether a conservation plan intended to apply to commercial timberland will protect lands and waters undergoing residential development.

If, as Holley says, only a small portion of Plum Creek’s lands will be developed, land sales are slow and the company will cooperate with the congressional investigation, it seems unnecessary for the company to sign any agreement until Congress’ investigative arm completes its investigation, the Forest Service agrees to supply local government with all the pertinent documents regarding the deal n many which have been deliberately withheld n and there is a searching review of the deal’s impact on the habitat plan. That would be the transparent thing for Plum Creek to do.

Charles Gauvin is president and CEO of Trout Unlimited. Bruce Farling is executive director of Trout Unlimited’s Montana Council. Trout Unlimited is a conservation group that advocates for trout and salmon.

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