River Rescue

Faithfully tending a valley and its inhabitants for thousands of years, the Blackfoot River received a promise of return care Wednesday from an alliance of conservationists, government land managers and a timber company.

In an $18.1 million transaction, Plum Creek Timber Co. sold 11730 acres along the lower Blackfoot River to the Nature Conservancy, which will in turn sell the land to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

When the deal is done, 10.4 miles of river frontage from Johnsrud Park to the western edge of Ninemile Prairie will be public ground.

"We all recognize that this river has been a big part of our lives, and that it has taken good care of us." Said Blackfoot Valley rancher Land Lindbergh. "It has just been within the last few years that we have begun to realize that there are a great many more of us now to take care of."

Signs of stress have started to show on the valley and the river "in many little ways and sometimes in really big ways," said Lindbergh. Mining, logging, agriculture, and now an abundance of people share responsibility for the Blackfoot's troubles, he said.

"The valley and the river are truly beginning to hurt." Lindbergh said.

Thus, the land sale celebrated Wednesday morning in the early season snow at Red Rock where the Blackfoot bends midway along the protected corridor. This river is a picture postcard every hundred yards." He said. The Blackfoot and its tributaries provide sustenance for remnant bull and cutthroat trout populations. Birds and mammals seek out its each-day-more-rare low-elevation wetlands; elk, moose, and deer, the highlands, Bald eagles next at Goose Rock Flats.

Tens of thousands of floaters, fishermen, and women, campers and picnickers defer to its waters in warmer seasons.

But the river bottom would most certainly have been developed had Plum Creek not chosen conservation over bigger profits, said Bill Possiel, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Montana.

"This transaction is a triumph of local commitment and corporate responsibility for conservation leadership," said Possiel, whose group entered the equation about five months ago, acting as a go-between to guarantee the sale from anxious private seller to slower-paced public buyer.

The Nature Conservency paid the property's $18.1 million appraised price on Tuesday and will hold the land while the BLM sells some or all of its 23,800 acres -- in 145 parcels -- to finance the public purchase.

The BLM land is scattered throughout five counties in western Montana, with the largest concentration in the Garnet Mountains east of Missoula. The agency had earlier listed the tracts as "nonretention" lands because of their low resource values and isolated nature.

By the end of 1997, the Blackfoot should be public. With the changeover, the BLM's Hamilton said, will come the promise of management for natural and recreational values.

Included in the 11,730 acres are nine established recreation sites already managed by the state Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks including Red Rock, Whitaker Bridge, Thibodeau Rapids and Daigles Eddy. The land extends for at least a mile on either side of the river, including portions of the Belmont and Gold Creek drainages -- tributaries to the Blackfoot.

Charlier Grenier, Plum Creek's executive vice president said his company realized the public interest in the Blackfoot and consciously chose the public buyer. The Blackfoot deal is the first major sale of lands identified for "higher and better use" by Plum Creek after its purchase of Champion International's western Montana timberlands.

Landowner Lindbergh said he and others watched the years of negotiations with "trepidation and anticipation. I must admit that while we hoped for the best, we feared at times that all would come to naught."

But the deal was sealed, in what Gov. Marc. Racicot hailed as proof of the "civil" --albeit oftentimes candid-- "existence we share here in Montana."

Said Lindbergh" "May I extend my congratulations and sincere thanks from all of us, those of us here now and those to come in the future who will benefit from this incredible achievement. I suspect that on my way back up the valley, I will hear the river give a sigh of many thanks. "And much relief." A River Rescue