The Plum Creek Chronicles

The news broke in Missoula, MT that Plum Creek Timber Company had been engaged in secret negotiations with the Department of Agriculture regarding the terms of their many road easements with the Forest Service.  The easements were giving Plum Creek heartburn as they contemplated subdividing and selling off up to 2 million acres (of their 8 million acres nationwide) for high value homesites in the expanding wildland-urban interface.  

The question on everyone’s mind: did the easements allow access for residential development, or for resource management (ie. timber harvest) only?  Some in the Forest Service and many in local government supported the latter interpretation - thus the secret negotiations.  If Plum Creek prevailed, significant ecological, economic and social impacts were certain in the communities where the company most wanted to divest.

Over the next eight months a diversity of public and private interests came together to prevent Plum Creek’s interpretation, in a perfect storm of protest.  In addition to Plum Creek and the Forest Service, a full cast of characters had roles to play: 

Featuring: Plum Creek, Mark Rey, and some top level Forest Service officials 

The camera pans across faces in a dimly lit, smoke-filled room.  The drinks are flowing, there’s laughter in the air, and a pile of paperwork on the table…  

The parties agree to language clarifying that the easements across national forest land do, in fact, allow Plum Creek to sell off prime “real estate” for residential development.  The Forest Service gets a guarantee that they won’t be responsible for fire-fighting costs to protect the new homes.  Amidst backslapping and handshaking, the deal is agreed to, in theory. 

Featuring: the Missoula County Commissioners/attorneys, Senator Tester, and conservation organizations 

The camera reveals a collective jaw-dropping expression from the Missoula County Commissioners as they catch wind (and some rancid cigar smoke) of the negotiations… 

The commissioners inform Senator Jon Tester, who orders Mark Rey to fly to Missoula and meet with the commissioners.  Rey comes to the meeting but will not release any significant information about what he and Plum Creek have been cooking up.  News accounts of the meeting and secret negotiations are negative, but the story gets little play outside of Missoula. The county files a Freedom of Information Request with the Forest Service, seeking more detail.  Rey chuckles all the way home, while Senator Tester makes a formal request for a GAO investigation. 

Featuring: Sen Max Baucus, conservation organizations, Plum Creek 

Following years of not-quite-so-secret negotiations, Senator Max Baucus includes funding in the 2008 Farm Bill that would allow The Nature Conservancy and other land trusts to buy more than 300,000 acres of Plum Creek’s Montana holdings.  The proposal is critically needed to prevent wholesale development of vital habitat.  The timing, however, is not ideal in light of the revelations about Plum Creek’s backroom dealings over road easements.  An article in the Washington Post covers both issues together.  Baucus and conservationists work hard to clarify that the land exchange/buyout is separate from the easement fiasco. 

Montanans seem equally excited and alarmed about the proposal – which has a $510 million price tag (only partly funded by the Farm Bill).  Should it happen, Plum Creek will be laughing all the way to the bank – after all, they never paid for the land in the first place (they came to own it as a result of the 19th century railroad land grants).  While the majority of Montanans seem to want this land to be converted to public ownership, few can disguise their frustration over the fact that Plum Creek will make millions from the deal. 

Featuring: conservation organizations/lawyers; social investment firms 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… images of suits and ties, bifocals and head scratching fill the screen… 

The county, Tester’s office and the GAO are completing their due diligence to challenge the disastrous easement negotiations.  Conservationists want to engage, but decide to remain behind the scenes, as Missoula County and the Senator are doing a good job making Plum Creek look bad in the media.  Nonetheless, conservationists work with their own lawyers to identify potential challenges to any final renegotiation of the easements.  Any litigation must wait until the easements are finalized.  There must be something else conservationists can do while they wait for the case to ripen…  

The camera cuts to a classic scene: conservation staffers at a happy hour party… scribbling on cocktail napkins… 

Fortuitously, staff from Wildlands CPR and the Clark Fork Coalition end up at a small party with representatives from Trillium Asset Management, a social investment firm.  They cook up a plan to launch a shareholder action against Plum Creek to pressure the fi rm into withdrawing from the negotiations.  Trillium brings in Newground Social Investment in Seattle, which has engaged in other dealings with Plum Creek, and the two firms launch a shot across Plum Creek’s bow.  The mere mention of their plan attracts more negative media attention to Plum Creek.  Plum Creek and the shareholders trade letters back and forth over several months, culminating in a final decision by the investment firms to file a formal shareholder resolution.  Wildlands CPR provides the firms with the bulk of the information needed to continue with these actions. 

Featuring: Plum Creek, Missoula County, Forest Service, Senator Tester, GAO 

In dramatic fashion, the halls of Congress are backlit, and the cameras capture a press conference… 

The GAO releases their preliminary findings, which clearly question the legality of the proposed Plum Creek/USDA easement renegotiation.  Tester continues to press Mark Rey.  The Forest Service releases the tiniest trickle of relatively useless information to Missoula County from their long-ago filed FOIA request.  Plum Creek and the Forest Service hold a series of meetings in different counties.  At the Missoula County meeting Plum Creek unveils a new strategy of subterfuge, stating that the county doesn’t have to sign the blanket renegotiation if they don’t want to.  Instead, Plum Creek considers using the new easement language as a template and applying it on a case-by-case basis.  You can almost read their minds with this approach – they’ll just go where people aren’t paying attention and apply the renegotiated easements without controversy.  The media coverage continues to paint Plum Creek in a very bad light, but it also continues to be mostly focused in the local paper, The Missoulian. 

Featuring: the entire cast 

On New Years’ morning The Missoulian includes yet another above-the-fold story about the Plum Creek renegotiations.  The headline is a brutal welcome to 2009 and does not bode well for those who care about the environment: “Rey to make decision on Plum Creek road access.”  A few days later, on a Sunday, The Washington Post runs a lengthy article about the easement issue, and Rey’s pending decision.  It is a follow up to their summer article that looked at both the easement renegotiation and the Baucus/Nature Conservancy/Plum Creek land deal.  The article is good, but seems to be too little, too late, as Rey practically guarantees he’ll sign the deal before leaving office.  

About face: The first real work day of the year (January 6) is half over when Plum Creek drops a bomb to the Missoula County Commission, declaring that they are pulling out of the renegotiation deal.  The county commissioners, activists and many others rejoice that this part of the fight with Plum Creek is over.  The following day The Missoulian has one more front page story proclaiming Plum Creek’s withdrawal.  The Washington Post also runs a follow-up. 

Everyone’s asking what happened, and those interviewed are consistent in their message: It was a full-court press.  No matter where Plum Creek turned they were resisted: Missoula County, federal legal analysis, public opinion, even some of their shareholders. It’s likely that there was no one act, on its own, that led Plum Creek to back down.  It took a lot of different people, engaging in very different ways, to surround Plum Creek and force them to drop their plans.  External factors like a crashing real estate market and the shift to a new Presidential Administration didn’t hurt either, though only Plum Creek can say why they finally pulled the plug. 

The costs of losing this one would have been astronomical from a conservation perspective.  But the battle isn’t over and many of the ecological threats still exist.  Plum Creek’s withdrawal just means that the status quo remains intact.  Plum Creek can continue selling parcels of land for development and the individual buyers can negotiate with the Forest Service on a case-by-case basis.  Many renegotiated easements are likely to fl y under the radar and never be challenged.  It’s one more example of the nature of conservation battles, which often involve ephemeral wins and permanent losses.  While this is an enormous victory, it may still be ephemeral. 

That said, by preventing the wholesale renegotiation of these easements to allow for development, the county, the Senators’ offices, conservation groups and other interested parties have ensured that there is at least some possibility for a vigorous review of easements in each case.