Landowner Programs
The Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks has several existing landowner programs that provide over $35 million of hunter and angler dollars that open up millions of acres of access to private land for public hunting, and for the conservation of critical wildlife habitat needed to ensure the abundance of elk, deer, pronghorn, upland game birds and a host of nongame wildlife.
This investment of hunter and angler dollars, along with federal excise tax dollars and funding from the Land & Water Conservation Fund creates a network of programs that spend millions of dollars each year incentivizing landowners who are generous enough to share their land with the public and/or create quality and productive wildlife habitat.
Those programs include the following:
Block Management | Begun in the late 1990s, the block management program currently opens over 7 million acres of private land to equitable public use, investing more than $30 million per year into private lands, with landowners earning up to $25,000 per year. These numbers show how popular the program is with landowners and with hunters alike.
Habitat Montana | The backbone of Montana’s conservation programs, Habitat Montana has conserved over 450,000 acres of land between outright purchases like the Marias River Wildlife Management Area and from conservation easements that allow public access to private lands. This program just recently secured a significant new investment of dollars through the passage and implementation of the recreational marijuana initiative and is expected to continue to be a popular tool in the toolbox for all Montanans.
Game Damage | Big game animals such as elk, deer, and pronghorn can cause damage to private lands and crops, creating situations that can’t simply be resolved by allowing public hunting during the regular archery & rifle seasons. The game damage program helps landowners by institution damage hunts for specific ranches, as well as supplemental game damage licenses issued to cull more than 12 animals that are damaging private property.
Public Access Lands Agreement | A relatively new program, PAL hopes to reward landowners who open landlocked public lands, and is appropriated at $1 million per year of sportsmen’s license dollars.
Upland game Bird Enhancement Program | Not all programs are centered around big game. The UGEP is primarily focused on ensuring huntable populations of wild birds like sharptail grouse and pheasant by helping landowners improve and conserve upland game bird habitat. This program has significant benefits for deer, pronghorn, and yes, even elk; especially in Central and Eastern Montana.
Unlocking Public Lands | This is another program designed to increase access to landlocked public lands by offering tax incentives to landowners who enroll in the program, to create a trail or road that will open up isolated parcels of land so hunters and recreationists can access them.