A race to reclaim forests: timber-managed land is up for sale, and forest communities are scrambling to maintain pristine environments and their way of life

But the new millennium brought new threats, this time from private timberlands that checkerboard the mountains rising on both sides of the Swan River. Plum Creek Timber Company, which owns nearly half the ground available for logging and forest activities, began putting land on the market. As a real estate investment trust, it is responsible to investors to seek the highest and best use of its assets. In Swan Valley, that means trophy homes.

Most of the 900 year-round residents want to protect the natural integrity of the valley, which hosts threatened gray wolves and is one of the few places outside Alaska where grizzly bears and humans co-exist. They also want to retain a working forest that allows logging and maintains public access to hunting, fishing, firewood cutting, and berry picking. Trophy homes threaten all of that by fragmenting the land with fences, gates, and "no trespassing" signs.

The red flag for the Ecosystem Center activists was Plum Creek's plan to put 20,000 acres on the market--10,000 for real estate development. The Ecosystem Center began drafting legislation to create an entity that would buy and manage all the timber company's holdings in Swan Valley. Plum Creek refused to sell. Then the Center tried to buy a smaller block of land, but Plum Creek again said no.

The Seattle-based company manages most of its Swan Valley property as timberland for future supply to its local mills, says Jerry Sorensen, Plum's Creek senior land asset manager for the Rocky Mountain region. It has sold 7,000 acres to the Flathead National Forest for conservation and plans to sell another 7,000. With 10,000 acres on the market for private real estate, Plum Creek is left with 55,000 acres for timber management.

"We're not going to sell land we've designated to manage for timber," says Sorensen.

Dahl and others call Plum Creek lands "highest priority" for the community, but negotiations have not gone beyond the option to purchase at market value after a "real estate cut," which generally removes every merchantable stick. "We've always said if they want to buy land we've targeted for sale, fine," says Sorensen. In Swan Valley's current heated market, real estate prices have soared to $7,000 an acre, seven times its value growing trees.

Frustrated by these direct dealings, the Swan Ecosystem Center recently hired staff to oversee a capital campaign to raise money for the land it is determined to purchase. "Our goal is to stop the bleeding with a community forest," says Dahl. "Very little more land can go to development before things begin to unravel."

But logging is not the Swan ecosystem's biggest threat; people are. Bear experts say the northern Continental Divide ecosystem can lose no more than four female grizzlies without risk to the entire population. Last year nine grizzlies were killed or died after interaction with Swan Valley residents.

Dahl doesn't expect to get a community forest with its timber stand intact, but local ownership would maintain wildlife corridors and give the land a chance to heal. It would provide restoration jobs to local woods workers and, eventually, logging jobs. By then it might even provide income to invest in local schools, libraries, and health care.