Forkyfinder
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I know they have it whether I see it or don't. That's the thing.
Montana 2025 Legislative Session
- Thread starter Nameless Range
- Start date
Irrelevant
Well-known member
Probably true, but they're not supposed to.
MTelkHuntress
Well-known member
Here's some proposed legislation from the department.
LC515 seems fishy. Why would the department what to make it easier to have game bird farms?
Elky Welky
Well-known member
The world needs more Kelly's Heroes references.
Eric Albus
Well-known member
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Because they are releasing birds too and realize there were to many restrictions on it. Pheasants are NOT NATIVE there should be no license requirements or limits if we follow protocols…. Asian collard doves prime example. They just showed up, hence no season, no tag,no limit. Pheasants would be treated the same if they were turned today or flew off the last container of Walmart goods import
Ben Long
Well-known member
This^ Testimony at the State Land Board this week strongly suggests the Leg will try to gut conservation easements. Huge impacts for generations to come.
ismith
Well-known member
Southern Elk
Well-known member
How would they do that?
Ben Long
Well-known member
Ban FWP from doing easements. Allow them to only do temporary leases. Add technicalities that make easements in general more difficult. I'm sure they could think of other stuff. Knudsen is hostile to perpetual easements on ideological terms.
Eric Albus
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I’m not a fan of anything in perpetuity.
Nameless Range
Well-known member
Though I understand some arguments against certain public holdings in perpetuity, something I think to be true is that if anything is forever, it will be Montanans’ desire to have places to hunt and fish and access to those places.
If I think about places that the state of Montana has acquired forever - the Beartooth Game Range, the Blackfoot-Clearwater, the Marias, etc - it’s hard for me to imagine a future where the citizens of this state would want to divest themselves of those.
If you don’t think a specific easement should be held in perpetuity, I think there’s a judgment call to make there, but I would hope that if an easement or acquisition made sense as an asset of Montanans for as long as Montana exists, one wouldn’t oppose it a on principle just because it’s perpetual. What I’m getting at is I hope representatives look at these things on a case by case basis, because there are cases where perpetuity makes sense.
Forkyfinder
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Why are you a fan of this? This isn't about making future CE temporary - it's about reversing what the taxpayers of MT already paid for and what all parties (including and especially the landowner) agreed on.
Straight Arrow
Well-known member
I do understand that ideology, although it seems narrowly focused. My bias is based strongly on where I live and mostly on the places in Montana that I have visited, love, and strongly support for preservation and protection. The conservation easement constraining development on private property which stands out for me is Turner's Flying D Ranch, spanning an area across gorgeous landscape from the Gallatin River west to the Madison Valley and from southwest of Bozeman to the Spanish Peaks. One can only imagine what a developed blight that area would have become if not for that easement. It is reassuring that it will endure in beauty and open space ag land for the "perpetuity" enjoyment of grandchildren and beyond.
The "perpetuity" of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone Nationa Park, the Thorofare comprised of national park and wilderness all are areas unimagineable to me as a Montanan only to be temporarily protected.
Eric, having closely considered what I view as your healthy Montana legacy values, it is surprising and difficult to believe that now you are not a fan of "anything in perpetuity".
Once a place is sold for subdivision, it's perpetually gone as ag land or wildlife habitat.
Once a place is sold for over appraisal, and put out of reach of working families, it's no longer family ag land, even if it does get leased to local farmers and ranchers.
Once it's in a perpetual conservation easement, that land is going to stay as it is today forever. That means the conservation easement helps ensure that family farmers and ranchers can buy that land, since the development rights are sold. It keeps it lower in price, reduces property taxes for the owners and ensures that it stays in production ag while still protecting the mineral right owners right to develop.
In the case of FWP easements, the perpetual access component means when we see large swings in available acreages like we've seen lately (1 million acres out of block management), it helps keep hunting pressure spread out rather than concentrated on dwindling acres of Block Mgt or public land.
If a landowner wants to sell their development rights, they get a premium with FWP because of the access component. That's a much better deal than some privately held conservation easements and that easement comes with assistance in the form of monitoring from the agency, and help planning the hunting recreation that comes with those easements.
The 40 year leases are a great tool, and the agency should be commended for turning that into a product that helps landowners who aren't on board with perpetuity. It would be short sighted to eliminate any tool for private land conservation, regardless of what some politicians think.
From a fiscally conservative viewpoint, those 40 year leases are a bigger expense per acre than the perpetual conservation easements, as they don't bring along that perpetuity but would have to be re-negotiated in the next iteration. Not a big deal really, unless the funding becomes a political football again.
Best bet is to keep all the tools we have for conservation. Habitat MT has done an amazing job in the over 40 years on the books of helping family ag stay at the local level, and improving wildlife habitat connectivity and avoiding issues other states are seeing with large subdivisions into 160's or 640's for smaller "amenity" properties with little actual production ag value.
shoots-straight
Well-known member
And, non native species should not be dumped in our environment just because you like them and they make you money.
This is likely a diversion issue with PR dollars, and issues that come with LWCF dollars. If properties or interests in properties are sold that were acquired with PR dollars, then that would constitute a "loss of control" issue with the USFWS and lead to the loss of all Pittman/Robertson dollars in the future (around 30% of the FWP budget, IIRC).
LWCF loss of control means the state would have to reimburse the fund for the same dollar amount that was used to acquire. So selling those easements to a different person would likely cost the state millions in lost license revenue as they have to pay the federal gov't back.
Pheasant are a valued game bird, regardless of where they originated from. Same with fish species like Brown trout, Walleye, Chinook Salmon, Smallmouth Bass, and other birds some variations of turkeys, quail, etc.
For preserves, some of the requirements seem to be perfunctory and punitive. I'm not a fan of shooting preserves but if it's keeping duffers off of public land where I can miss wild birds in peace, then reforming some outdated methods of management shouldn't be that big of a deal. YMMV.
When I inquire of most folks as to why they do not want a property owner to exercise a right granted to them by the 5th Amendment of the United State Constitution, the honest ones say something like that quoted above.
The less than honest ones give me some BS about lost tax rolls, abuse, etc., none of which occur if they knew how CEs work from a tax standpoint and if they understood who Montana's generous ag exemptions for property taxes already lower assessed values below what any CE would account for.
So, for the honest folks, it is an ideological issue.
I am often confronted with folks who don't like me owning as many firearms and as much ammo as I have, based on their ideological beliefs. My 2nd Amendment rights are not up for debate. It is a right granted under the US Constitution to prevent the Government from taking that right from individuals.
Now, with the issues of opposing CEs, we have a different side of the same coin, where elected folks have "ideological" opposition to property owners exercising their rights under the 5th Amendment. No different than the ideologues opposed to protections under the 2nd Amendment, just a different issue with a small group of elected folks feeling comfortable imposing their world view on others, with complete disregard for the Constitution.
I am confident that if these bills were to pass, they would be in court the next day under grounds of Constitutionality. The Property Clause of the 5th reads ....“nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation”
The courts have ruled liberally toward the position of the property owner, using over 220 years of case law to define property rights, the backbone of our entire economic and political system.
These bills want to take the private property by eliminating what a property owner can do, yet there is no "public use" provision and there is certainly no "just compensation."
We do have the "I'm opposed based on ideological reasons" defense that will be laughed at by the courts.
Given property law consists of unlimited types of easements, I am curious why only Conservation Easements are being attacked and restricted. Access easements, grazing easements, open space easements, water storage easements, the list goes on and on. For the sake of certainty to both parties to the easement, everyone of those I've ever seen is in perpetuity. Yet, I see no "ideologues" hammering those easement.
I don't care if you hunt or not, this kind of attack on property rights should get you pissed. I hope to not be traveling when these hearings come up. They will surely be lively and it will be a chance for those who view the US Constitution as a "Document of Convenience" to stand and self-identify by supporting such bills.
