Yesterday in Senate Finance and Claims Senator Mike Lang (R-Malta) amended SB 442 to restore the 20% funding for Habitat Montana and add a new conservation program that expands and improves the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program, creates a new habitat council designed to take the politics out of habitat acquisition and conservation, funds better maintenance for rural county roads, increases benefits for disabled veterans and their spouses, increase funding for addiction counseling and intervention programs.
This is a significant step forward in investing Montana's marijuana tax revenue in to programs that help all Montanans and bring forward the best in all of us.
For conservation purposes, the bill does the following:
1.) Creates the Habitat Legacy Account. This account will house the 20% allocation of marijuana revenue for both Habitat Montana and the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program. The funding will flow into Habitat Montana at 75% of the allocation, with 25% allocated to WHIP projects until such time that $50 million is in the Habitat Montana account that is unobligated. After that, the funding stays in the Habitat Legacy account, and can be used by both programs, based on need. This account will receive about $17.3 million per year. The Legacy program also has a $1 million per year allocation of Pittman Robertson funding as well.
2.) Creates the Habitat Council: Currently, the WHIP board only oversees the work done relative to that program. The bill expands the scope of the council to include reviewing Habitat Montana projects as well to help ensure viability early in the process, bringing surety to landowners looking to sell their property or place an easement on it as well as answer any questions relative to assessments, quality of the project or other issues that have been flagged by the Land Board.
3.) Creates the expanded Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program which will do the following:
a.) Improvement and maintenance of habitat on tribal, private and public lands.
b.) Projects that improve water conservation such as irrigation projects, beaver dam analogs, etc
c.) Improvement and maintenance of riparian areas and aquatic habitat
d.) Range management projects, range health projects, drought resilience projects
e.) Noxious weed management projects
f.) Wildlife conflict reduction projects
g.) Conservation Districts, Grazing Associations, irrigation districts, 501 (C)3 wildlife and landowner groups, county weed boards and state, tribal and federal agencies.
The bill also sets up a new fund that allocates 20% of the general fund portion of the marijuana revenue to be used to maintain county roads, and specifically ones that provide access to block management areas, public lands and other areas open for access. The goal is to help ensure better road maintenance especially during the fall when the thaw and freeze cycle is happening daily. Lang's amendment moves this fund from the conservation portion over to the general fund portion but still helps ensure better access routes to publicly accessible lands.
This model is built off of the highly successful Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust that passed in 2005, but is uniquely developed to fit Montana's landscape and ownership mix. It will be up on the Senate floor on Monday, so feel free to call your local senator and ask them to support a bill that brings so many different interests and causes together under one bill.
(406) 444-4800 or contact them through your usual means or through the legislature's web portal.
