MISSOULA – The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) acquisition of 1,120 acres in the Lower Blackfoot River drainage secures permanent public access to the land. Using $868,000 from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the transaction finalizes a series of recent acquisitions which help stitch together what had been a patchwork of interspersed public and private land.
“Expanding access to our public lands is an upmost priority of the Trump Administration and the Bureau of Land Management,” said BLM Deputy Director for Policy and Programs William Perry Pendley. “In addition to increased recreational access, this acquisition will allow the BLM to prevent catastrophic wildfires within this important watershed by actively improving the health of the forest.”
This acquisition is within the Upper Belmont Creek landscape, 25 miles northeast of Missoula and follows a similar transaction of 4,480 acres in June. Last November, another acquisition also added 7,268 acres of new public land in the Blackfoot drainage.
The acquisitions by the Missoula Field Office are aimed at securing access in the Blackfoot River Watershed on former industrial timberland. The goal is to maintain working lands including active forestry and fire-management projects that would reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires and improve the health of the forest, consistent with the goals of Executive Order 13855 and Secretary’s Order 3372. The area also offers high-quality hunting and fishing access and other close-to-home recreation opportunities in Missoula’s backyard including cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, hiking and mountain biking.
“Public access to recreation is critical to the social and economic well-being of our community and we’re certainly seeing an unprecedented number of visitors to public lands this summer,” said Acting Missoula Field Manager Wendy Warren. “We appreciate partnerships which facilitate opportunities like this acquisition in the Belmont where the public can enjoy the great outdoors.”
The Missoula Field Office sees about 222,000 recreation visits to its lands annually; the expenditures of local and non-local visitors would support approximately 78 jobs and $2.3 million in labor income each year.
The Belmont acquisition aligns with Secretary’s Order 3356, which directs the BLM and other Department of the Interior Bureaus to identify ways to expand access for hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation on agency-managed lands.
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