There is no doubt that folks in Montana are concerned about access issues with the sell-off of Plum Creek land properties (the main hunting land) for development. Hunters and anglers need to wake up. Slowly but surely their hunting land is being diminished. This conversion of working timberlands to real estate is one of the biggest threats to the lifestyle that people enjoy in western Montana.

For years, residents have used a road across Plum Creek Timber Co. land to access their home in the Swan Valley. Set about a mile from the nearest county road, the family depended on Plum Creek's road to access their homestead and other private land properties.  Not only did Plum Creek allow the residents to drive across the property, it even provided a utility easement for the local telephone line.

Then, in about 1990, the timber company sold the property to a Florida man. Not long after that, a locked gate appeared across the road to keep the public out. At first he gave residents a key to the gate, but then someone tore the gate down.  He blamed the residents and dug a tank trap across the road right at the property line. He dumped the pile of dirt on our land and sowed the pile with logs so nobody could push it back in the hole.

Montanans are finding themselves locked out of some of their favorite hunting land and backcountries such as Plum Creek as they are selling off prime acreage for real estate development.  Generations of Montanans have become accustomed to Plum Creek and their predecessors' generosity when it came to accessing millions of acres of hunting land and recreational land. Without so much as a second thought, Montanans hunt, hike, bike, gather wood and picnic on these private timberlands - fully expecting they'll be here this year and the next.

But with Plum Creek's creation of a real estate subsidiary, the Plum Creek Land Co., and plans afoot to develop big chunks of its 1.3 million acres in western Montana, a good bit of access to land properties could soon be lost.

Plum Creek has been a marvelous neighbor in terms of providing access to their land properties, said Tim Aldridge, a longtime outdoorsman in Missoula. A lot of people would have a difficult time differentiating between public land properties and those owned by Plum Creek.

Most likely anyone that knows the hunting land in Montana, at one time or another knows they were on Plum Creek lands.  When those corporate timberlands change owners, quite a few folks will find fresh orange paint on fence posts and no trespassing signs hanging from nearby trees at some of their favorite hunting land getaways. And it's not only access to Plum Creek lands that's at stake, but also land properties in Montana that had been known as the top hunting land.  Much of Plum Creek's holdings either border or are scattered in a checkerboard fashion among public land properties.