The Montana Chapter of The Nature Conservancy has received the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services annual National Land Protection Award for significant contributions to land-protection partnerships with the Service.
Eric Alvarez, chief of the Services Division of Realty, recently presented the award for the Montana Chapters work with the Service on projects in the Centennial and Blackfoot Valleys and in the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area. During the past two years, the Conservancy has helped conserve more than 62,000 acres of important trust species habitat in those three areas. In 2005 alone, the Montana Chapter donated nearly $2.3 million to the Services land acquisition program.
The Chapter this week announced the purchase of an 11,500-acre ranch in Montanas Centennial Valley. It plans to re-sell much of that land to the Service to add to the Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge.
The Fish and Wildlife Service relies on partners to help us meet our conservation mission, and with increased land costs those partnerships are more important now than ever," said Service Director Dale Hall. "The Nature Conservancys efforts to preserve wildlife habitat in Montana shows how cooperative conservation is producing real results on the ground."
The Fish and Wildlife Service has been one of our most important partners in Montana conservation, so were honored to receive this award," said Jamie Williams, the Conservancy"s Montana director. "We are fortunate that so many Montana landowners are committed to the conservation of private lands and that we and our partners, like the Service, can support these locally-driven efforts."
The Conservancys promotion of community-based conservation - empowering local residents to protect their rural lifes and working landscapes - provides a model for Americas land-preservation community. In Montana, carefully developed local ties helped smooth the way for a key element in the ultimate success of the Blackfoot Valley project, the purchase of 54,000 acres from a timber company. The Conservancy worked with the local landowner group, the Blackfoot Challenge, to involve the local community in determining the ultimate management and ownership of those lands.
The Montana Chapters community ties have generated positive support for land protection using conservation easements, from which the Service has been able to foster grassroots support for its easement initiatives. The Conservancy was instrumental in getting the states legislature to authorize the use of conservation easements. Montana now has nearly 1.5 million acres permanently protected under conservation easements, fee title and other permanently protected acres among the highest acreage in the United States.
