Eight-hundred acres of western Montana habitat are now protected from future development. A new conservation easement helps anchor a safe passage for wildlife to move between valleys.
The Warm Springs Creek easement project sits in the Garnet Mountains, north of Interstate 90 and Garrison. Landowners Star and Greg Batchelor say the lush wetlands, conifer forest and high subalpine meadows host wildlife, including cutthroat trout, elk, grizzly bears and Canada lynx. The area also serves as a wildlife corridor connecting the Northern Continental Divide, Selway-Bitterroot and Greater Yellowstone ecosystems.
Mitch Doherty is conservation director with the Vital Ground Foundation, which helped complete the easement deal with the Batchelor family.
“We’re starting to see a lot of grizzly bear expansion recently," Doherty says. "Specifically, out of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. This project is located in a place where that movement is just so important right now.”
The Batchelor family will remain on their homesite, but the easement precludes future subdivision development.
"We’re all fighting for the same places to live. And when I say all of us, it’s wildlife and people. We all want to be down in the river bottoms and in these really special places. So yeah, subdivisions have, by far, the most impact on wildlife movement.”
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Montana Public Radio
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