On June 1st and 2nd, the Private Lands Public Wildlife Council (PLPW) met to finalize their recommendations to lawmakers and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP), to review access programs related to corner-to-corner public access scenarios, and to offer new ideas for increasing landowner participation in public access programs more broadly. The Montana Wildlife Federation (MWF) has long participated in these PLPW discussions, and June’s meeting was no different.
As a reminder, the PLPW is a Governor-appointed group of landowners, outfitters, and hunters charged with, among other things, improving hunter-landowner relations, addressing landowner concerns and issues flagged by the outfitting industry, and approving some public and private access agreements.
A number of hunters and conservation organizations provided comments. You can watch or listen to the full meetings here. MWF’s comments are summarized below:
Re: The Landowner Stewardship Course
There were concerns expressed by PLPW that by potentially making this quick and easy online Landowner Stewardship Course a requirement – rather than voluntary – we would see a massive decline in hunter participation which would significantly reduce hunter day payments to landowners. MWF respectfully disagreed, and we were surprised by the opposition to improving hunter behavior, given how much attention hunter behavior receives.
MWF reminded PLPW that Block Management payments have jumped 330% in just a few years. And despite a 10% drop in enrolled acres, we’re looking at record numbers of hunter days on Block Management properties, a 56.6% increase in just the last decade. There’s no shortage of interest or funding. MWF is much more concerned with poor hunter behavior leading to Block Management disenrollment than we are hunter-day-payments dropping from a requirement to take a quick online course on how to respect private property. Hunting or walking across private lands is a privilege – taking a quick course to acknowledge this privilege, stressed MWF, is the least we can do.
Comparisons were offered to both the bear ID course – a prerequisite for buying a bear license which hasn’t decreased the number of licensed bear hunters – but also to the archery license – requiring a course to hunt anything in this state with a bow. The archery license even requires a mandatory $10 annual fee – yet this also hasn’t led to a reduction in archery hunters.
MWF suggested that compliance for stewardship course completion could be achieved with better signage, reminders, and maybe a warning for any first-time violators.
Further, MWF asked that consideration be given to the idea of creating a new private-land-public-access license for a nominal annual fee. This quick, online stewardship course could be a one-time prerequisite for that license, and the license could be a requirement for participating in access programs administered by FWP – similar to how the archery license is a prerequisite for archery hunting, and the bear ID course is required to hunt bears. Any revenue from that hypothetical private-land-public-access license could go directly to these private access programs, or enforcement, or regional access managers, all needed to ensure these access programs have a future.
Re: Landowner Preference
PLPW sought to address the problem of nonresident landowners having increasing success in the landowner preference (LOP) permit drawings, to the detriment of resident landowner success. To illustrate the problem, FWP pointed out that LOP permits for nonresident landowners have more than doubled since 2020. Those come out of the 15% of total permits set aside for both resident and nonresident landowners.
One suggestion from PLPW was to cap nonresident landowners to just 10% of the 15% of landowner permits. Concerns were expressed that this may end up being too restrictive or too complicated for FWP’s drawing process.
MWF offered another idea to help achieve the same outcome: to repeal the nonresident landowner preference passed in 2023. Existing preference for nonresident landowners gives them up to five deer and elk combo base licenses (eliminating what was a previous drawing hurdle as those base licenses are requirements to then draw a special permit). But, thanks to that 2023 legislation, nonresident landowners also get an added bonus point if they provide access, a benefit not enjoyed by resident landowners who are competing with nonresident landowners for the same permits. This actually gives nonresidents a leg up in the LOP permit drawings. MWF suggested that by repealing this and revisiting a bill from 2025 – HB 907 – we could level the playing field for resident landowners substantially while still encouraging participation in public access programs.
Additionally, MWF again suggested that by timing the landowner preference draws with the Elk Hunting Access Agreement (EHA) program we would be essentially asking landowners to pick or choose between the near guaranteed permits of EHAs, or rolling the dice with regular landowner preference. This scenario would undoubtedly increase participation in EHAs, and therefore moderately increase public hunting access – as those come with the requirement of allowing at least three public hunters – while also providing that landowners hunt their own deeded lands, an added bonus in terms of the actual intent of landowner preference, but also the impact of crowding on public lands.
Re: Corner Crossing
Much of the focus was on corner crossing, but not the legality of corner crossing which is currently being challenged in Montana. Rather, the conversations were about improving access and/or creating access to inaccessible public lands, either by using existing tools or creating new ones.
MWF agreed that yes, we should be using the many programs we already have to improve access, including areas of the checkerboard corner-to-corner access where legal access is not only unclear but less than ideal; a larger access corridor would ensure that hunters and anglers could utilize these lands in broader terms than what a simple stepping-over-a-narrow-corner would provide. For example, PLPW members brought up that in this scenario, going through a corner with a game cart, or on a horse, or with llamas, or pulling a sled, or with hunting dogs, all of those scenarios would be challenging if not impossible without expanding access corridors at corners.
Re: Accessing Inaccessible Public Lands
We were happy to hear about FWP’s previous efforts to utilize GIS systems to conduct targeted outreach to landowners eligible for the Public Access to Lands Agreements (PALAs). MWF encouraged FWP to relaunch that effort now that we have a new Block Management Corridor program which not only applies everywhere PALAs do, but pay more (up to $25,000 instead of being capped at $15,000) and – most importantly – apply to any public-land-adjacent landowner wanting to open access, not just to those who hold public land leases (a restriction of PALAs). This is a critical distinction that garnered much more attention on Day 2 (below).
MWF also pointed to the potential for permanent solutions to inaccessible public lands rather than just annual voluntary agreements that are temporary. For example, fair land exchanges could be an option to consolidate lands, thereby decreasing or removing inaccessible acres. Access easements are another option, especially if landowners could be compensated not just for the acreage of the easement but for what it opens in public access. MWF pointed to two existing tools/funds to do exactly this: the Access Public Lands program and Habitat Montana.
MWF also pointed to Montanan’s land banking program where the funds the state generates from selling inaccessible state lands are supposed to be used to purchase new, accessible state lands. Targeted land purchases could also ‘unlock’ inaccessible public lands or solve corner-to-corner discrepancies. Unfortunately, not a penny has been spent on new state land purchases since 2018. $41-$43 million sits in that account now, and if funds from individual land sales aren’t spent in ten years they get diverted. MWF encouraged this money to be used to purchase new state lands, and quickly.
PLPW expressed legitimate concerns about real trespass near corners, especially unmarked corners. MWF suggested that if corners aren’t obvious, rather than simply shrugging our shoulders and pretending we can’t find a solution, we should explore ways to work with pro-access groups and volunteers to assist FWP, landowners and land management agencies to survey, stake and sign these corners to help minimize confusion and conflict, while also enabling legal public access. Using the ambiguity of a corner’s precise location as a prohibition to allowing public access seems insincere; let’s work together to mark it. Again, the Access Public Lands program has funding available for projects like these.
On Day 2, MWF pointed out that the issue of inaccessible public lands isn’t a new issue. With digital mapping technology this issue may be more visible now, sure, but it’s not new.
These access programs and solutions aren’t new either.
Yet 80% of inaccessible lands remain inaccessible.
Why is that? We asked.
We have access coordinators across the state. We have a half dozen programs offering all forms of flexibility in terms of who, when, where and how people can utilize access. We’ve increased landowner compensation virtually across the board. We’ve dropped the hammer on fines and penalties for rulebreakers. And to encourage more enrollments, we’ve seen eligibility requirements changed for PALAs going from 2 miles to 1 mile in terms of how we define under-accessible.
Yet the predicament remains.
So again, MWF asked why that is? What haven’t we done?
The elephant in the room, we argued, appears to be the prohibition found in many of these programs where landowners are not eligible unless they hold the grazing lease on the public land too. This is incredibly limiting. Since this PALA legislation was introduced in 2019, there have been concerns about this and how by allowing this prohibition enables a ‘that’s-my-land’ fallacy on leased lands to persist.
These are public lands. They may be important to a ranch operation, but ranchers don’t own these leased lands or hold – or pay for – access rights on these leased public parcels. The public can and should still be able to access their multiple use federal public lands, or their state lands – lands that hunters actually pay a specific fee annually to allow for their public access. While the public being on public land that a leaseholder is used to treating as their own is probably an inconvenience, is that a legitimate reason to prevent access to public lands?
PLPW mentioned that leaseholders could be disgruntled if their neighbors were compensated for opening access to public lands that they themselves lease. MWF understands this concern, and we suggested that instead, perhaps we should amend these access programs to allow leaseholders the right of first refusal for that compensation. But if leaseholders refuse, then there should be nothing stopping their neighbor from exercising their own private property right of allowing the public to walk across their land to access adjacent public land. This wouldn’t be forcing access, but rather greatly increasing access-program eligibility.
MWF suggested that if we find there are legitimate operational or safety concerns from leaseholders, let’s hear them on a case-by-case basis, and let’s take them seriously. But we shouldn’t be prohibiting access by default without hearing those concerns in a public forum first. And that’s what many of these access programs do now.
Removing this programmatic barrier seems like a needed step to allowing voluntary and incentivized access to inaccessible public lands, and that was the biggest message MWF delivered at the June PLPW meeting.
The PLPW Committee will now formalize their recommendations and pass them along to the FWP staff and lawmakers on the Environmental Quality Council to consider.
Again, you can watch or listen to the full meetings here, or contact the PLPW Committee with your own thoughts, ideas or concerns.
Map courtesy of OnX Hunt
