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As summer begins to wrap up here in Western Montana, we are all doing what we can to soak up the warmer weather before fall sets in. Whether you’re fishing along the Blackfoot, hiking in the Mission Mountains, or just getting outdoors in general, Montana summers are a brief and coveted time of year for our part of the world. While the summer provides a lot of opportunities to experience all that the Seeley Swan has to offer, it usually brings one unpleasant, unavoidable experience: wildfire. This year, however, we seem to have gotten lucky. L...
Summer is in full bloom. Across the West, our natural areas are experiencing unprecedented visitation. With things opening up and more people traveling farther from home, this trend is only expected to increase. Montana’s forestlands are no exception. Higher numbers of campers, bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts will have an impact on our lands and the wildlife that depend on them. We remind everyone to treat the landscape respectfully and follow posted regulations. Watch out for those campfires, stay on the trail and please pack out what y...
The Nature Conservancy and partners plan to conduct and/or assist with prescribed fires in the Blackfoot Valley this spring. The burns are part of TNC's ongoing forest restoration work which includes timber harvest and thinning. The primary purpose of the burns and our other forest restoration work is to reduce the risk of high severity fires in these forests. This will include reducing the woody debris that has accumulated and could feed a fire that would threaten nearby communities. The burns...
The Nature Conservancy and its 550 scientists are launching Nature Lab, a new online learning platform designed to help students learn the science behind how nature works for us and how we can help keep it running strong. “As schools around the world shut down in response to COVID-19 and parents work to balance the demands on their time and energy, we know that students will have very different learning experiences over the next few months,” said Kate Ireland, director of Youth Engagement Programs at The Nature Conservancy. “I’m proud that Th...
SEELEY LAKE - The Nature Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service are excited to announce the finalization of a sale which will move 16,400 acres of former commercial timber lands into the public domain. The land, west of Seeley Lake, was characterized by the checkerboard pattern of public-private ownership that was created more than a century ago. This sale includes land from the 117,000 acres that TNC purchased from Plum Creek Timber Company in 2015. Over the last 30 years, TNC has purchased more t...
With abundant snow, this has been an outstanding season for winter recreation around Seeley Lake. We are grateful to all of the people and partner groups who have made this a safe, successful and fun season on The Nature Conservancy’s lands. From skiers to bikers to snowmobilers and more, we are working with many different groups to plan for recreation all across this landscape. We want to thank the Driftriders Snowmobile Club for a great season of working together. The club groomed hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails, managed closures, c...
Recreational public access and wildlife habitat have been protected on nearly 5,500 acres of former industrial timberland in the Blackfoot Valley. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) transferred the land to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) using an award from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This was the first transfer in TNC's Clearwater-Blackfoot Project in which the organization acquired more than 117,000 acres of large forest land tracts. The aim of the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project is...
As snow finally blankets the valley, the quiet and cold gives us time to reflect on the last year. 2016 has been an incredibly busy year for The Nature Conservancy in Montana, including for those of us who work on the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project. In almost two years since acquiring the 117,152 acres that comprise the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project, the Conservancy has been working hard to address urgent conservation needs and to understand the landscape as a whole. Projects of this scale always have an element of uncertainty but our work with...
HELENA - A new grant from Montana’s Forests in Focus program will make homes safer, create well-paying jobs and improve forest health – all at the same time. The $249,534 grant will be used to thin out dense forest to reduce the hazards posed by wildfire. Besides reducing the fuel load for any potential wildfire, the work will open up the forest, allowing more light and moisture in to nurture the trees that are left. The work will create 17 jobs between this December and November of next year and will supply 3,166 tons of materials to local mil...
