BLM purchases more than 7,000 acres in lower Blackfoot watershed

MISSOULA – On Nov. 21, the Bureau of Land Management's Missoula Field Office preserved public access by acquiring 7,268 acres of land in the Blackfoot River Corridor. Using Sportsman's Access funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), the acquisition from The Nature Conservancy is helping stitch together what had been a patchwork of interspersed public and private land.

The Belmont Creek acquisition, located 25 miles northeast of Missoula, was part of 117,000 acres purchased by TNC from Plum Creek Timber Company in 2014. As was typical through Western Montana, much of this land ha...