Private forestland owners angry over hunting season vandalism

Michael Jamison

KALISPELL – With the big-game hunting season finally closed, it’s time now for private forestland owners to pick up the pieces and begin making repairs.

“Out west of town, in the Thompson River area, more than two dozen gates – basically every single road gate – was either busted open or vandalized,” said Lee Anderson. “Every one of them. It’s becoming a real issue, and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to providing public access on private forests.”

Anderson is warden captain at the local offices of the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and it’s his job to investigate cases of trespass and vandalism. The trend, he said, is clear – more people in the woods, more four-wheelers, more damage, more cost.

“It’s on the increase, and our foresters, the guys out there in the field, they’re fed up with it, and their attitude is we should just shut it off,” said Paul McKenzie, resource manager at Stoltze Land and Lumber Co.

Fortunately for a public that has come to consider private timberlands an extension of public forests, Stoltze – and its bigger neighbor Plum Creek Timber Co. – has no plans to shut access off any time soon.

“But there aren’t many states left like Montana,” McKenzie said, “where the private forest land is open to the public. Without a doubt, if we continue to see this kind of damage without any changes, we’re going to hit a breaking point.”

Think forests closed to hunting, fishing and recreating. Or at least, think a pay-to-play system, where you buy an access permit to walk in their woods.

“If you pay for something, you tend to treat it with a little more respect,” McKenzie said. And fee revenue could help pay for patrolling, and enforcement, and for replacing broken locks and gates.

For now, neither Stoltze nor Plum Creek have any plans to shut off use or even to charge for it, “but I can’t tell you how far we might be from that threshold,” McKenzie said. “That’s the $10,000 question.”

And it’s a question that worries local outdoorsman Tony Anderson.

“I got rid of everything else in my life,” he said. “I don’t golf, I don’t play softball. I just fish, and I hunt, and I camp. And my goal is to leave outdoor opportunities behind for my grandkids.”

Anderson’s been hunting these hills – both public and private – for decades, and has seen what he calls “a huge change in the attitude of people toward someone else’s land. In the last four or five years, I’ve seen it atrociously abused – beyond what I would accept if it was my land.”

Browns Meadow. Lake Mary Ronan. Hubbard Reservoir. Gates ripped. Locks cut. Trails pioneered. Trees flattened. Timber cut. Mud bogged. Weeds spread. Streambanks eroded.

The upside to allowing access – solid public relations, a chance to educate people about forestry, a culled deer herd not as likely to browse tomorrow’s timber – at some point begins to pale in comparison to the downside.

“If we don’t try something,” Tony Anderson said, “I’m afraid these guys are just going to say enough is enough. We stand to lose an incredible privilege, because people are treating it like a right.”

Tom Ray, vice president of Northwest Operations at Plum Creek, says his company has always offered free and open access, “and we have no plans to change that policy as of now,” he said.

But Plum Creek already prohibits ATV use behind its gates, something Stoltze still allows. Plum Creek cut off the ATVs, Ray said, in order to protect wildlife and forest resources.

Still, not everyone follows the company rules. The budget for replacing company gates and locks each year, Ray said, runs in the range of $40,000. And FWP’s Anderson said that over the past year his offices handed out more than 40 citations on Plum Creek lands.

“It’s certainly not a new problem,” McKenzie said, “but it’s definitely getting worse.”

Worse, perhaps, because there are more people – and, in particular, more people with machines.

“That’s the focus,” McKenzie said, “is the motorized use. That’s what’s doing the most resource damage.”

Worse, perhaps, because public land managers have not provided more places for machines in the woods.

“They’ve buried their heads in the sand in terms of how people use these machines,” he said.

Worse, perhaps, because they’ve all heard – but never proved – the local story that some four-wheeler dealers offer a free pair of bolt cutters with every ATV purchase.

“That’s probably not entirely true,” Anderson said, “but it does tell you something about the general attitude out there.”

McKenzie is quick to add that most hunters – and skiers and mountain bikers and four-wheelers and berry pickers – are responsible in their treatment of private land. It only takes a few, he said, to “ratchet up the headache factor” for forest managers.

And so he proposes that ATV riders police themselves, and form an association of their own to educate others. Snowmobilers have done that with success, he said, as have backcountry horsemen and Nordic skiers.

“Some people will always push it, no matter what,” he said, but the peer pressure of a riders’ group could help change cultural attitudes. State law enforcement cannot be in all places at all times, he said, and neither can his foresters.

That means responsible outdoors folk, if they want to continue to access private forests, might want to keep an eye out for troublemakers. Gather good information, warden captain Anderson said. Take a picture if you can. Call in an anonymous report.

And the courts, all agreed, need to follow up arrests with consistent and meaningful penalties for those caught in the act.

Outdoorsman Tony Anderson suggests it might not be a bad idea to put license plates on ATVs, to make identification and reporting easier. The state’s already investing in new maps and new signs, to better post the biggest trouble spots.

Combined, Plum Creek and Stoltze and Stimson Lumber Co. have placed more than 750,000 northwest Montana acres into a “block management” program with FWP, allowing hunting on their lands. And although the companies say public access will continue, Tony Anderson notes that those forests are ringed by smaller private lands, owned by local residents.

Often, those residents have gates of their own, McKenzie said, and so control the access to the broader forest lands.

“Everybody’s frustrated,” he said, “but those little landowners have a lot lower threshold, in terms of what they’re willing to put up with. If they shut it down, it could close off a lot of country.”

“There’s no real reason people can’t enjoy this privilege for years to come,” FWP’s Anderson said. “They just need to agree not to blow it for everyone else.

“Right now, the stakes are high, I think, for being able to recreate into the future.”

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Source: http://www.missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_274a3f3c-e836-11de-976a-001cc4c002e0.html

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