May 22–Public comments are wanted on using Natural Resource Damage Program money to buy 640 acres for $1.38 million on Garrity Mountain, two miles west of Anaconda.
The land would add to the 6,000-acre Garrity Mountain Wildlife Management Area, which is valuable elk habitat.
Supporting the purchase are Natural Resource Damage Program staff, the Anaconda Sportsmen’s Club and a Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist. If the money is OK’d, the purchase must be approved by the state land board and the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission.
“It’s really very important elk winter range in the Anaconda area,” said Ray Vinkey, state biologist for the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. “When we have a hard winter, the elk are more on this proposed addition than they are on the ground we already own. It will allow ready public access — it’s just off county road a few miles west of town.”
The additional land includes 225 acres of grassland and 300 acres of aspen and riparian areas.
“Aspen provide important habitat for a variety of species from birds, to bats, to elk. It’s a relatively rare habitat in the upper Clark Fork with an important conservation value,” Vinkey said.
The 640 acres are owned by The Conservation Fund, which buys land all over the U.S. that would otherwise be purchased by private developers. The group then holds the land for state agencies to put into public hands after going through the comment period.
The fund purchased the land for $1.28 million and will sell it to the state for $1.38 million, using the additional $100,000 to pay for its costs and overhead.
The state proposes using $1.28 million in Natural Resource Damage Program money, $50,000 from Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Habitat Montana and a pending $50,000 from the Montana Fish and Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimates it will need about $80,000 for initial operation and management of the land to build a primitive four-vehicle parking lot, do weed control and fix fences.
“We go up every night and look at the elk and the deer there,” said Lorry Thomas, the president of the Anaconda Sportsmen’s Club. “In the last two weeks we counted 270 of them, no more than 300 yards up the road. Some guy back east was really looking at the property for a summer home, but he couldn’t quite come up with the money, so that was a good thing in our favor. It would be bunk to have it made a subdivision. It would wreck that whole winter herd.”
Purchasing the property, which was bank owned, is outlined in the 2012 Final Upper Clark Fork River Basin Aquatic and Terrestrial Resources Restoration Plans.
“It fits in very well with the goals of enhancing wildlife habitat in the basin,” said Greg Mullen, an environmental science specialist at the NRDP.