The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is studying the best way to repopulate the Bitterroot Mountains with grizzly bears, and one new conservation easement might make it easier for bears to get there.
On Monday, Vital Ground, a Missoula nonprofit organization, announced it had secured a permanent conservation easement on 160 acres in the Clark Creek basin west of Lolo.
North of U.S. Highway 12 near the Lolo Creek Campground, the property borders U.S. Forest Service land that extends north unbroken across the Grave Creek Range until it hits private land around Interstate 90 near Ninemile and Petty Creek.
Mitch Doherty, Vital Ground conservation director, said the landowners, who wish to remain anonymous, approached Vital Ground about a year ago about creating a conservation easement. When he saw the location, it appeared to be a perfect opportunity to preserve an important wildlife corridor.
“It’s a real thrill for us to do this,” the landowners said in a press release. “Wildlife is very important to us, and we always had the intent of wanting to put a conservation easement on this property. It’s a very important wildlife corridor: we were looking at grizzly populations and the linkages and thought our property could be a small part of that.”
Some years ago, Vital Ground developed a conservation strategy to identify important areas in the northern Bitterroot Mountains that would support natural movement of grizzly bears and other wildlife.
It turned out the property’s location makes it a key parcel along probable routes that grizzly bears might follow as they migrate from other recovery areas to the north. One route leads south through the Ninemile drainage - where a wildlife highway crossing is planned - toward the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness.
“Vital Ground purchased 50 acres at the Ninemile confluence in 2018 to support wildlife movement out of the Ninemile, and we’re helping with the highway crossing project. Our vision is, if we can get bears moving out of the Ninemile heading south, they’ll hit the Clark Creek drainage and eventually over to the Bitterroots,” Doherty said.
A lot of the land along Highway 12 between Lolo and Graves Road is private, but fortunately, not much has been subdivided. That could change with more people trying to move to Montana. Jamie Jonkel, Fish, Wildlife & Parks bear biologist, said bears have already shown how important it is to have undeveloped land in the Clark Creek drainage.
“It’s perfect for that north-south movement,” Jonkel said. “We’ve had several grizzlies that came down and spent time feeding on hawthorn in the Lolo Creek bottoms and Clark Creek, both from the Cabinet area and the NCDE. Everything about it is really good as an intact area with good connectivity.”
Eventually, a crossing structure might be needed to help animals cross Highway 12. For the moment, traffic isn’t too heavy so wildlife can cross a little easier.
“It’s a little slower with those curves — you don’t have those high speeds like you do on I-90,” Doherty said.
The timing of the easement is opportune. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is developing an environmental impact statement on ways to recover the grizzly bear population in the Bitterroot ecosystem.
The draft statement is scheduled to be released in June, and Hilary Cooley, Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, has said the recommended method for recovery of the population will be natural migration. Preserving habitat along migration corridors between recovery areas is becoming increasingly important.
The cost of the easement wasn’t revealed. The landowners paid a portion, and the rest of the money came from Atira Conservation, a North Carolina-based land conservation organization, First Interstate Bank and many individual donors, according to Vital Ground. The landowners said they would continue to steward their land to benefit all the wildlife they’ve observed in the past.
“The riparian area has consistent spring-fed flows,” the landowners said. “It’s heavily used by black bears in the hot summer. They’ll come in and splash around and drink, then come back to eat hawthorn and serviceberries in the fall. It also has elk wallows in it, plus mule deer, whitetail deer, and we have wolves coming through fairly often, as well as mountain lions and golden eagles.”
The project contributes to Vital Ground’s One Landscape Initiative, a conservation strategy for protecting the most crucial private lands that connect the Northern Rockies’ public-land strongholds.
With the Ninemile confluence purchase in 2018 and an Evaro Canyon project completed this fall, the Clark Creek project adds to Vital Ground’s effort to improve wildlife connections around Missoula’s growing human footprint.
Doherty said Vital Ground would be happy to help any other landowners in the Clark Creek area with conservation easements to further protect the wildlife corridor.
“These sites that are private that connect forestland to forestland are key,” Jonkel said. “They’re not glamorous, but they’re very, very important. It’s preserving linkage into perpetuity as Montana’s getting built up so quickly.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
