Plum Creek to Sell 300,000 Acres in Montana

[TheTone]

Well, then you better get out the Roundup!

Roundup? At least use something cool, like Tordon or Milestone.

 

[1_pointer]

Sure. I don't spay weeds, but figured Roundup would work...

 

[BigHornRam]

Sunday Missoulian Opinion Piece

Jose,

I gave you a good tip....why be such a dink? No shares of PCL, I'd rather own real Plum Creek assets, not paper. 200k worth.

Here's the opinion piece.........

Opinion
Trusting a closed-door deal: If Plum Creek, Forest Service are striking a good bargain for Montana, why keep it secret? - Sunday, June 1, 2008




A land deal of massive proportions involving public officials, public money and public resources is swiftly moving forward - while the public is being left in the dust.

U.S. Forest Service officials have been negotiating with Plum Creek Timber Co. executives in closed-door meetings for months over long-standing road easements that may or may not grant access for uses other than logging. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey says they do. Many others say they don't.

Hanging in the balance is the question of whether Montana counties will end up responsible for maintaining roads and providing emergency services to subdivisions built miles from the nearest town and in the middle of wildfire-prone forests. Unfortunately, we don't yet know the answer to that question because when some county commissioners in Montana asked to see the easement agreements, Rey basically told them they would have to sue for them.


Actually, what he said at first was that commissioners would have to look through their own files to find them, which would have been an exercise in futility since commissioners wouldn't know which agreements to look for, nor which parts of them might be subject to “clarification,” in Rey's words. Now he's saying the commissioners' request is under consideration.

It's more than a little disturbing that one government agency isn't willing to share information with another, and that the public is being excluded from decisions that stand to have a significant impact on us. It really shouldn't come to this, but if the only way to see the Forest Service's easement agreements with Plum Creek is to take the agency to court, then so be it.

Meanwhile, the federal farm bill was approved by a veto-proof majority in Congress, and included in that bill is a provision that could throw a lot of taxpayer money Plum Creek's way. The provision essentially provides $250 million for land conservation by financing land buys through the sale of tax-credit bonds.

Given all this, we doubt last week's announcement that Plum Creek is ready to sell off about 300,000 acres of the 1.2 million acres it owns in Montana was entirely coincidental. Plum Creek said it would accept $500 million for the land. The state and federal governments could purchase it by using - surprise! - the money provided through the farm bill provision, plus an additional $100 million from state agencies, and the rest could be raised by the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, the two conservation organizations that have already begun meeting with Plum Creek to discuss which lands should be included in the deal.

This has the potential to be a win-win for both the public and Plum Creek. Not only would Plum Creek get to sell off a large portion of its lands all at once, those lands would still be managed to allow for logging. The public would not only gain ownership of large swaths of forested land, we would also be saved the headache of trying to figure out how to protect private property in those areas from wildfires.

Even better, if the deal involves enough acres in Missoula County, we could finally wrest the authority to protest zoning enacted by the county. Right now, Plum Creek owns more than 400,000 acres in Missoula County, which amounts to more than half the private land in six of Missoula County's nine zoning regions - meaning it may protest and potentially cancel any attempt at zoning. While some state legislators have pledged to remedy this during the next session, a large enough land sale could resolve the issue, too.

But we don't yet know for sure. Though the farm bill provision appears to be a done deal, we haven't been let in on just how its use will play out in Missoula County.

We have no problem with Plum Creek angling to get itself a good deal. As a publicly traded company, its interests lie with its stockholders.

But we can't understand why our public officials, with the notable exception of county commissioners, aren't pressing for more public involvement. They are supposed to be acting in the public's best interests and at the very least, we deserve access to the same information Plum Creek has been given. After all, it's our money that's being offered.

And it's not at all clear that we're getting

a good deal.

 

[Oak]

Big landowner gets closed-door deal
New Forest Service rules could let largest private owner convert land

By Karl Vick
The Washington Post
Fri., July. 4, 2008

MISSOULA, Mont. - The Bush administration is preparing to ease the way for the nation's largest private landowner to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain forestland to residential subdivisions.

The deal was struck behind closed doors between Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, and Plum Creek Timber Co., a former logging company turned real estate investment trust that is building homes. Plum Creek owns more than 8 million acres nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana, where local officials were stunned and outraged at the deal.

"We have 40 years of Forest Service history that has been reversed in the last three months," said Pat O'Herren, an official in Missoula County, which is threatening to sue the Forest Service for forgoing environmental assessments and other procedures that would have given the public a voice in the matter.

The deal, which Rey said he expects to formalize next month, threatens to dramatically accelerate trends already transforming the region. Plum Creek's shift from logging to real estate reflects a broader shift in the Western economy, from one long grounded in the industrial-scale extraction of natural resources to one based on accommodating the new residents who have made the region the fastest-growing in the nation.
Environmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside.

"Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we're kind of missing the loggers," said Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit that studies land management in the West. "A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that's going to be that way forever.

"It's kind of the ugly face of the new economy."

Rey said he, too, laments the ascension of "McMansions" over working forest, but he insisted that the law obliged him to accommodate Plum Creek's request for clarification of its rights to cross public land. Rey emphasized that during the private negotiations, Forest Service lawyers leveraged promises from Plum Creek to moderate the impact, including mandating "fire-wise" measures to reduce the danger from summer wildfires.

Under the new agreement, logging roads running into areas controlled by Plum Creek could be paved — and would thrum with the traffic of eight to 12 vehicle trips per day to and from each home, according to O'Herren.

Critics say that will further imperil grizzly bears, lynxes and other endangered species in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem, a region of rugged peaks, glacier-carved valleys, and sparkling rivers and lakes that straddles the border between Montana and Canada — and that in parts remains as Lewis and Clark found it.

"For us, this is kind of an arterial bleed, and we're either going to get a handle on it or not," said Melanie Parker, executive director of Northwest Connections, an environmental group in the Swan Valley, 60 miles northeast of Missoula.

Parker recently eased an SUV through Glacier Ridge, a nascent subdivision marked by freshly scraped lots and sumptuous views of the Mission Range on one side, the Swan Range on the other and the still-sparsely populated valley in between. The spring-fed bottomland is prime bear habitat where her husband, Tom, a hunting guide, saw his first grizzly.

"Look at that, Tom!" Parker yelped, after a climb up a knoll revealed a three-story log home, still wrapped in Tyvek HomeWrap insulation.

"They're like mushrooms. You get a few sunny days and they pop right up."

Most are the second, third or even fourth homes of wealthy newcomers who have transformed the local economy — 40 percent of income in Missoula County is now "unearned," from, say, dividends — and typically visit only in the summer. In Antler Ridge, across Highway 93, Web cameras installed over bird nests and a bear den beam photos to a hedge fund partner who visits his 200 acres just a few times a year.

"He was actually in France when the bear left the den," said "remote wildlife viewing" contractor Ryan Alter, on his way to install a camera at an owl's nest. "So I sent him pictures on his BlackBerry."

"I wanted to own land out there because I was always very interested in the concept of restoration, conservation," Paul Gurinas, the hedge fund partner, said by phone from Chicago. "The fact that it's almost become kind of a housing subdivision, that isn't what I was looking for. I guess I wish I had bought the whole thing up, and then I wouldn't have to worry about it."

That same impulse drives a different kind of land deal in the area: The buyers are the Nature Conservancy and other organizations that purchase desirable private land to preserve it. Since 2000, the groups have paid Plum Creek market rates to secure 280,000 sensitive acres in Montana alone.

Another 320,000 acres are being preserved under a provision that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) forced into the farm bill, which survived President Bush's veto. The measure includes $250 million to back bonds to buy Plum Creek lands that otherwise might be developed.

"This is like the last big, wild, intact landscape in the Lower 48," said Eric Love of the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group that with the Nature Conservancy announced the $510 million purchase on Monday. "If these lands are going to be sold, someone is going to buy them. The question is, who?"

Plum Creek said it has sold only 3,000 of its Montana acres to developers in the past five years, and it expects to sell even less in the next five, the company's president, Rick Holley, wrote in a recent op-ed in the Missoulian newspaper. But critics point out that its calculations may shift with the real estate market.

A decade ago, while repairing an image as the "Darth Vader of the timber industry," as one congressman put it, the company showcased good-forestry practices on a hillside above Flathead Lake.

That parcel is now Eagle's Crest, a gated subdivision with its own airstrip and lots on offer for $100,000 an acre. Remote corners of Swan Valley are selling for $11,000 an acre, with broker inquiries arriving from Europe. By comparison, the "net present value per acre of forest" runs at most $500, said Larry Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

"It's a pretty straightforward proposition: The region's economy is moving from extraction to amenities, and you would expect the same thing to happen with its largest landowner," Swanson said.

"It's a tough deal. Change is hard, and this is pretty fundamental change. But what's happening here is perfectly understandable."

Missoula County officials say their objection is not to change, which traditionally rural jurisdictions have struggled to manage, but to being blindsided by Rey's announcement of a far-reaching change negotiated in secret.

Plum Creek owns 57 percent of Missoula County's private land, a posture that under state law gives it veto power over any zoning. Over the decades that the Forest Service enforced limits on logging roads, the county came to regard federal policy as a firebreak against development.
"All these years, we've been told those roads are not for residential use," said Jean Curtiss, who chairs the county commission. "These are logging roads. They're for timber management."

If the deal goes into effect, the county stands to lose money in providing services such as snow plowing and ambulances to remote new developments.

"You're looking at a real nightmare scenario in managing wildfires," Rasker said. "And you're going to have access issues: If these now become gated subdivisions, it's going to be harder for people to go hunt and fish, and that's pretty important to people in Montana."

 

[BigHornRam]

Obama Get's in on the Action

Obama lambastes closed-door Plum Creek land talks
By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau



HELENA - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday blasted closed-door talks between Plum Creek Timber Co. and the U.S. Forest Service that would allow the timber giant to use Forest Service logging roads for real estate development.

“At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off,” Obama said in a written statement. “We should be working to conserve these lands permanently so that future generations of Americans can enjoy them to hunt, fish, hike and camp.”

As first reported by the Missoulian in April, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey has been meeting with Plum Creek officials behind closed doors to redefine the timber company's future use of easements across Forest Service lands.


Those easements were thought to be limited for use by loggers - so the timber company could drive across public land en route to its own timber stands.

Now, though, Plum Creek has reorganized itself as a real estate investment trust. So the negotiations are looking at whether the company can use the easements for other purposes, such as accessing subdivisions and backcountry homes.

Plum Creek is the largest private landowner in Montana. The vast majority of the easements involve company timberland in western Montana.

Rey, whose duties include oversight of the Forest Service, told the Washington Post last week that he expects to finalize the deal next month.

Some state and county political leaders and others have come out against the negotiations, arguing they should have been conducted in public, for they deal with how vast acreages of western Montana will be used in the future.

Some sportsmen also have come out against the change, saying they fear that placing homes on lands that were used temporarily for logging would harm fish and wildlife habitat and close public access to hunting and fishing grounds.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has asked the investigative arm of Congress to examine the negotiations to make sure they are legal.

On Tuesday, Obama said he would support the use of tax incentives and other mechanisms to encourage private landowners to restore and protect wildlife habitat.

About 320,000 acres of Plum Creek land will be protected through a provision that U.S. Sen. Max Baucus included in the latest farm bill, which has $250 million to back bonds to buy Plum Creek lands eyed for development.

So far, the company has sold only 3,000 acres in Montana over the past five years.

Also on Tuesday, Montana members of Sportsmen for Obama, a group of hunters and anglers supporting Obama for president, criticized the closed-door dealings.

“We want more and we should get more from our federal government,” said Steve Doherty in a conference call with Montana reporters.

Doherty, a former Democratic state senator from Great Falls, is a member of Sportsmen for Obama and also chairs the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission.

 

[BigHornRam]

Here's another spin on this land deal...

The New Colonialism
Our Forest Legacy



Well, did you buy Plum Creek stock on my suggestion last month?

A few weeks ago, Congress passed HR 2419, the “Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008,” aka the Farm Bill. Deep within this 682-page pig were two impressive, and impressively stupid, pork slabs for corporate America: $182 million in tax breaks for Weyerhaeuser; $500 million for Plum Creek – buried there by Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, who proudly announced the funding May 23 alongside Plum Creek CEO Rick Holley.

Plum Creek’s stock closed at $42.47 May 23, and on June 5 was at $47.03.
Nonetheless, both these windfalls are remarkably inept, even for this Congress. As I wrote two columns ago, the “timber industry” (Weyerhaeuser is the last holdout) is dead. Changing tax laws now won’t “save” Weyco or keep it from breaking up into a Real Estate Investment Trust.

As for Plum Creek’s present … hasn’t the company already scored enough goodies from Congress?

First, the shutdown of federal timber harvest not only reduced the once-wonderful United States Forest Service to an empty husk and killed off most of Plum Creek’s Northwest sawmilling competition, also raised the value of Plum Creek’s wood – an outcome worth millions to its bottom line.

Second, when environmentalists began litigating over the bull trout in 1992, Plum Creek as the largest private owner of bull trout habitat found itself at serious risk of shutdown, an economic and political disaster not just for the company, but for Montana.

In a political tour de force, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt offered Plum Creek a lifeline in the form of “safe harbor” provisions contained in what is now the Native Fish Habitat Conservation Plan. Work began in earnest in 1998, and the NFHCP was approved in November 2000 … the nick of time. Babbitt helped save the company, but probably also saved the Endangered Species Act.

Environmental groups, including Trout Unlimited and Pacific Rivers Council, opposed the NFHCP, sued to stop it, but failed. An unhappy Bruce Farling of Trout Unlimited complained that Plum Creek got “30 years of insulation from lawsuits with this document.”

Third is federal REIT law, that has enabled every major integrated timber company (except one) to disintegrate, literally tossing millions of acres of forests through a gigantic loophole … profitably.

In short, faced with the legal and economic environment Congress created, Plum Creek, like all timber bigs, has cut … and now they’re running.

I can’t blame Plum Creek. Were those my trees, I would do exactly the same. Cut ‘em, cash ‘em, then buy more ground where I’m less likely to be sued out of existence, or … get into another line of work entirely.

So here’s the deal, touted as the “Legacy Project.” Plum Creek will get $500 million for up to 300,000 acres and a minimum of 40,000. Half the funding will be federal, with the state of Montana expected to pony up $100 million and the Trust for Public Lands and Nature Conservancy raising the rest.

Bummer.

First, the “nonprofit” partners, which between them hold about $4.5 billion in net assets and scored $106 million in government funding in 2005 alone, will get their money from contributors interested more in “Nature” than Montana.

Next, half the ground is to go to the Forest Service, an agency that emphatically cannot manage what it already has.

Finally, the ground being offered here is not the “good stuff” for trophy buyers and subdivisions. It’s ground with little present value for subdivision, and not the prime timber-growing ground, which Plum Creek intends to keep.

So what’s the real legacy? Colonialism – outside interests running Montana for their benefit, which often is not Montana’s benefit.

Last year, Montana had a budget surplus of over a billion dollars. We shot it away. In retrospect, Montana would be far better off to have taken $500 million, grabbed every acre we could to expand our state forests and school trust. Ever after, the policy shots would be called by Montanans, elected by Montanans. We could have gotten hold of at least a small part of our future. But we didn’t.

And that’s our legacy.

By Dave Skinner, 06-11-08 | comments (2) | email story | print story