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Creating a Family Legacy (Sawtooth Ranch)
Protecting the land (Lost Horse Creek Ranch)
Preserving the land (Wood Family Ranch)

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Ravalli County event helps land trust
by Laura Wilson - KPAX

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Area residents had the chance to help conserve land simply by drinking beer on Sunday. The Bitter Root Brewery hosted a fundraiser today that encouraged customers to "save an acre" by "drinking a pint". The brewery donated 50 cents of every beer purchased to the Bitter Root Land Trust. The Bitter Root Land Trust assists property owners who help to conserve clean water, open spaces, and wildlife habitats on their land. Customers also had a chance to donate money to the fundraiser by bidding on silent auction items and purchasing "split the pot" tickets. The fundraiser was a way for people of all ages to celebrate a good, local cause. "We've just celebrated our biggest year for conservation in the Bitterroot, which gives us a good opportunity to tell people about the acreage we've conserved over the last year," explained Bitter Root Land Trust Program Manager Robin Pruitt. "So, it's a good avenue for us to not only raise money, but tell people about the work that we're doing." Sunday's event featured a live musical performance by the Big Sky Mudflaps.

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Creating a Family Legacy
by Perry Backus - Ravalli Republic

Bud Grover knew about hard work and its rewards.

When he was young, he did a stint in the Butte mines. When he and his brother decided there had to be a better way to make a living, they enrolled at the University of Montana’s fledgling pharmacy program. They paid their way through school with money raised by trapping beaver, mink and other critters.

After he graduated, Grover settled in Deer Lodge and built a successful pharmacy business, but he never lost his love for all things wild.

He decided early on that someday he was going to own a ranch where he could run a few head of cattle. Just as important, it needed to be a place where wildlife roamed, streams coursed and solitude beckoned.

“He knew what he wanted,” his son, Joe, remembered. “We spent a lot of summer vacations looking at different ranches all over the state.”

None of them were just quite right.

And then one day - back in the early 1960s - Joe and his mother, Hazel Grover, decided to take a look at a hard-scramble place a real estate agent said wasn’t worth seeing just outside of Hamilton.

After negotiating a rough swamp-lined road, the two found themselves at the edge of a big meadow with sweeping views of the Bitterroot Mountains. They stepped out of the car to hear the murmur of Sawtooth Creek. The air tasted good. There might have even been a cow elk staring down at them from the treeline.

“I took a look around and knew that this was it,” Joe remembered. “I called my dad and told him we’d found it.”

It was 1963 when the Grover family struck a deal on the property that would become the Sawtooth Ranch. Ever since that day, three generations of the Grover family have worked, explored and loved the 840-acres of timber and grass.

Other than a new house, a caved in old barn and a few new steel-post fence lines, not much has changed over the decades since then.

“We’ve tried to keep it without changing it that much,” Joe said.

Earlier this year, Joe and his wife, Carrie, decided they wanted to ensure this piece of ground that’s played such an important role in their family’s lives would never be developed.

This week, the Ravalli County Commission approved using $550,000 of the county’s Open Lands Bond monies to help purchase a conservation easement that will keep the Sawtooth Ranch intact forever.

The Grovers donated $350,000 toward the cost of the easement. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation chipped in another $20,000.

“It was really, really great,” said Ravalli County Commission Chair Carlotta Grandstaff about the meeting. “Everyone who was there spoke in favor of the project … it’s a beautiful piece of property.”

The Sawtooth Ranch project is the third - and the largest - to be funded under the county’s Open Lands program.

Ravalli County voters approved the $10 million bond program to help preserve open land through the purchase of conservation easements in 2006. The county is one of four - including Missoula, Gallatin and Lewis and Clark - in Montana with similar open lands bond programs.

Gavin Ricklefs, executive director of the Bitter Root Land Trust, said protecting the Sawtooth Ranch from future development “was a unique opportunity in the Bitterroot Valley. There aren’t that many parcels of that size left on the west side.”

The ranch is adjacent to another 160 acres already protected under a Montana Land Reliance conservation easement. There are two other landowners considering easements on their adjacent properties.

“We could end up protecting about 1,200 acres from the Forest Service boundary to the West Side Road of contiguous elk winter range and over two miles of Sawtooth Creek,” Ricklefs said.

The first three projects under the county’s Open Lands program have exemplified what the voters wanted to conserve when they passed the bond measure, Ricklefs said.

A 265-acre easement for the Wood family ranch between Corvallis and Stevensville protected agricultural lands. A 144-acre easement on the Bell family place south of Hamilton protected waterways on Skalkaho and Sleeping Child creeks. Important elk winter range, wildlife habitat and water will be conserved at the Sawtooth Ranch.

Ricklefs said there are other projects in the works.

“I think it’s quite reasonable that we’ll be able to conserve 2,000 acres in 2009 alone,” he said. “It’s really been thrilling for me to see that people are willing to help landowners conserve these important areas in the valley.”

Joe Grover said it took time for his family to come to terms with putting a conservation easement on their property.

“The idea of preserving this wasn’t that difficult,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all along. What was difficult was the idea that you give up the right to do anything you want with your land and that somebody else enters the picture.

“It takes time to build the trust that’s necessary for you to feel good about that,” Grover said.

The couple said they’ve appreciated the efforts of the Bitter Root Land Trust in putting together the easement.

“They have been wonderful to work with,” said Carrie Grover.

The ranch has never been a moneymaker. These days - with his father gone - Grover does most of the work around the place.

“I do it because I like to do it,” he said. “It’s my exercise program.”

But there will come a day when he can’t do it anymore and that’s where the money the family received from the county’s Open Land program will help out.

“There’s always some kind of maintenance that needs to be done here,” Grover said. “The last time my dad was up here he was 93. He was working with a chainsaw and he cut his Achilles’ tendon. He walked back to the jeep and drove himself to the hospital.

“He was a tough old guy.”

Bud Grover’s ashes were scattered on the ranch after he died at 97 years.

“It’s good to know that this place is not going to change,” Joe said. “I think he’d be happy about that.”

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Protecting The Land
by Jeff Schmerker - Ravalli Republic

Two weeks ago the Ravalli County Commission agreed to sign a conservation easement to protect in perpetuity the 428-acre Lost Horse Creek Ranch. The agreement, which will cost taxpayers $409,000, saves open lands, long-distance views and tons of wildlife habitat and uninterrupted corridors.

And what a save it was.

The land had already been platted and approved for subdivision into 44 plots ranging from a few acres on up.

The platting had been done by Joe Klucewich and his wife Sherry. They did not want to see homes on the land but did it as a precaution in case the family needed the money later.

Joe died, but his dream of keeping one of the last big ranches in the Bitterroot intact did not. Sherry remarried Stan Swartz 13 years ago on a small rise overlooking the Como Peaks and a pond they built on Moose Creek.

On Monday, as the mountains hulked under a heavy sky, Stan said not only did finalizing the conservation easement for the land protect it for future generations, but hopefully preservation of the Lost Horse Creek Ranch will spur other Bitterroot landowners to secure their own easements.

The agreement signed on the Lost Horse was the third signed by commissioners; a fourth was signed New Year’s Eve.

The easements, which protects against any future development except for what is written into the finalizing document, are purchased by the county using the $10 million in bonds approved by voters. The easements are then transferred immediately to the Bitter Root Land Trust. The land stays privately owned; the money is commonly used by the owners for ongoing maintenance.

“The money will allow us to be able to live here and enjoy the property for many years and to help cover some of the costs of maintenance and stewardship of the property,” Sherry Swartz said. “That was the fear - as we get older and can not do all the work we need help to do that and pay to have it done. Some of that money will allow us to do that in the future. Each property protected by the county so far has unique characteristics, said Gavin Ricklefs, director of the Bitter Root Land Trust.

The Lost Horse Ranch occupies one of the most iconic Bitterroot landscapes - long-range mountain views, bold streams, prime elk, moose, deer, black bear and mountain lion habitat, and open pastures which can easily be viewed from along Lost Horse Creek Road.

“In the past 30 years we have seen what has happened to all the open space,” Stan Swartz said. “If we don’t start now to protect some of what we have here in the Bitterroot Valley - open lands and wildlife habitat - then we are going to lose it forever.”

The Swartz family put a lot of work into restoring the land, Stan said. They removed trash, repaired meadows, and modernized barns while keeping a rustic look. They also put a lot of work into maintaining and restoring large riparian areas.

“We have done a tremendous amount of stewardship work on this,” Sherry Swartz said.

Sherry said she started talking to members of the Bitter Root Land Trust about a possible easement just over a year ago. She had talked to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation about a similar deal but ultimately chose to keep the easement title in local hands.

While the public does not gain the right to use the land or hunt it, the public is getting a good deal for its $409,000, Stan said. The easement protects something that no money can buy - prime wildlife habitat, open space, water and wetlands, and agricultural practices.

“These kinds of places are disappearing from the valley, especially places of this size,” he said. “Is the public getting its money’s worth? In my own personal opinion it’s one of the best returns they can get.”

Hopefully the successful signing of easements on more parcels will get even more landowners interested in being a part of the conservation easement process, Stan Swartz said. The key for her, Sherry Swartz said, was knowing that while she was giving up some rights to her land she was not giving up control, nor lifestyle. The big test for her was how she felt waking up the next morning - was she changed? No, she said, she felt no different.

“We have really appreciated working with the Bitter Root Land Trust and the people who make the group up,” Stan said. “Having been through it there is nothing I would change about the process. Now, with the bond money, we have an avenue where if landowners want to put their land into a conservation easement they can do that. A lot of folks don not have the money to pay the costs. So if some costs can be taken care of - it’s a small price to pay for that.”

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Preserving The Land
by John Cramer - Ravalli Republic

More than a century ago, the Wood family started farming and ranching in the fertile bottomland of the Bitterroot Valley.

That was long before sprawl started to gobble up the landscape, turning open spaces into subdivisions, blacktop and shopping strips.

On Monday, two descendents of the original Wood settlers ensured that the remaining 265 acres of the family’s homestead would remain undeveloped forever.

“We’re very pleased,” said Laurie Wood-Gundlach, who along with her sister, Janet Wood Farley, became the first landowners to sign a conservation easement under Ravalli County’s Open Lands bond program.

Wood-Gundlach, who lives in California, returned to Hamilton to witness the county commission’s unanimous vote to approve the easement.

“As the owners of this historical and productive ranch, we believe that preserving the family heritage and protecting the agricultural way of life in the Bitterroot Valley is the best legacy that we can leave to the valley,” she said.

About two dozen people showed up in solidarity, which open space advocates took as an encouraging sign that more landowners will look into conservation easements to preserve the valley’s farms, ranches, wildlife habitat and water quality.

After the public hearing, Wood-Gundlach e-mailed her sister, who moved from the Bitterroot to Hawaii two years ago.

“I was almost in euphoria,” Wood-Gundlach said.

Gavin Ricklefs, executive director of the Bitter Root Land Trust, which will administer the Wood family’s easement, said public support for the project was heartening, especially in the wake of controversy over the county’s defunct growth policy and derailed zoning and streamside setback proposals.

In November 2006, Ravalli County voters approved a $10 million bond program to help preserve open land through the purchase of conservation easements.

Conservation easements restrict most development rights in exchange for cash payments, tax breaks or other financial benefits.

“A lot of people want this” Open Lands bond program to succeed, “and now we’re finally coming together as a community to protect this valley,” Ricklefs said.

The Wood family started ranching and farming in the Bitterroot Valley in the 1890s when two cousins, Albert and George Wood, bought nearby parcels of land along the Eastside Highway between Corvallis and Stevensville.

Albert Wood, who was the Wood sisters’ great-grandfather, and his descendents farmed their land until the 1950s when they sold it outside the family.

George Wood and his descendents farmed his land until the Wood sisters’ father, Clyde, bought it in the 1950s. He worked the land until he died in 1988.

It is that 265-acre ranch, known as the George Wood ranch, that the Wood sisters are putting into a conservation easement, which is to be finalized in the next few months.

Wood-Gundlach, 57, and Wood Farley, 59, who are Bitterroot natives, spent their early childhood on the Albert Wood ranch before moving to Corvallis and later to Missoula.

They didn’t spend much time on the George Wood ranch, so they don’t have an emotional connection to that land like their father and mother, Dora, who died in August.

But the George Wood ranch is the last of any Wood property in the valley, and Wood-Gundlach said she and her sister were committed to preserving it for agriculture and open space.

Two generations of the Trexler family - first Larry, now Reed and Kari - have leased and operated the ranch for about 15 years.

Wood-Gundlach said she started thinking about preserving the ranch about 10 years ago when she heard a National Public Radio story about a conservation easement in Gallatin County.

She learned more about easements from the Nature Conservancy and a Missoula friend who is a land-use attorney before deciding two years ago to work with the Bitter Root Land Trust to put the family ranch into an easement.

“The financial part of this is secondary for us,” said Wood-Gundlach, who along with her sister will get a payment of $265,440 in exchange for permanently giving up most development rights on the ranch. “What’s important is the land itself.”

Wood-Gundlach said she and her sister never used to consider the ranch as developable. “But then we thought: What if we died and it gets sold to someone with no emotional attachment to the land whatsoever,” she said. “There would be nothing to prevent a new owner from carving it up into home sites, which would be awful.”

Farms and ranches “are the cornerstones of the Bitterroot Valley and it’s our family’s background, so this is a way to preserve, in essence, nature’s artwork and still have it be viable in terms of agricultural production.”

Wood-Gundlach and Ricklefs said the conservation easement came about because of a partnership between private and public parties, especially the county’s Open Lands Board.

More ranchers and farmers might sign easements tailored to their needs if the Wood family ranch easement works out the way the Woods and the Trexlers expect, they said.

“There’s an innate wariness about encumbering your right of ownership,” Wood-Gundlach said. “You lose some of your flexibility and, in essence, devalue your land, so you have to be willing to make that commitment to protecting agriculture and open spaces.”

Reed Trexler, 30, who raises beef cattle and horses and grows some grass hay and alfalfa, said he initially worried an easement would hamper his ability to run the ranch.

Now, he thinks it will help by guaranteeing that the land won’t be sold off to developers.

“At first, I didn’t like it,” he said. “I thought it was like selling your land to the government, but the more I learned about it, I got to thinking it would be just fine.”

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