Montana Legacy

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One of the largest and most complicated conservation projects in U.S. history, the Montana Legacy Project is the culmination of an unprecedented partnership between private and public entities to conserve 310,000 acres of western Montana forest land owned by Plum Creek Timber. Working together and with support from state and federal agencies, regional conservation groups, and thousands of local residents, The Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) acquired the final 70,000 acres in December 2010.

TPL's work on the project arose from our work to protect land in the Swan Valley, a tapestry of communities, working forests, and wildlife habitat within the Crown of the Continent ecosystem—the most intact biological ecosystem remaining in the contiguous United States and one of the last places on earth where not a single plant or animal has gone extinct in the last two centuries.

The private timber land purchased for the Montana Legacy was intermingled in a checkerboard pattern with thousands of acres of public land. The Legacy Project seized the opportunity to erase this fractured pattern of ownership, allowing the land to be managed more effectively and preserving a healthy mix of wildlife, recreation, water catchments and working lands.