Finding mental health - and elk - in Montana's Big Snowy Mountains

It’s not often to see one piece of property serve the needs of two such noble objectives. Twenty miles south of Lewistown, where the central plains of Montana rise to meet the trailing edge the Big Snowy Mountains, the causes of providing vulnerable children with mental healthcare, and preserving Montana’s century long elk hunting legacy intersect.

On Tuesday, representatives of Shodair Children’s Hospital, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks gathered to promote and encourage public support for a proposed land sale that would greatly expand public access to the Big Snowy Mountains while simultaneously ensuring Shodair's ability to complete a new children’s hospital in Helena.

If approved by the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission and the Montana State Land Board, the sale would create a new 5,677-acre Big Snowy Mountains Wildlife Management Area on the southeast corner of the island mountain range. The “Big Snowy Mountain Acquisition” as it is currently referred to, would forever preserve critical elk habitat while adding access to more than 100,000-acres of public lands that is largely blocked by private property holdings.

Mike Mueller, Lands Program Manager for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation described the potential deal as “a historic story for Montana.”

“We’re proud and honored to be working with this great entity here; Shodair Children’s Hospital, to pull this project together,” Mueller said. “The founders of the Elk Foundation - which was started right here in Montana in 1984 - this is what they envisioned. Working with amazing, generous, visionary landowners like Shodair Children’s Hospital. I can’t think of a better place for these funds to go. This is a historic story for Montana.”

The story begins with Forrest Allen, a Montana farmer/rancher who grew up working on his family’s sheep and cattle ranch on the southern edge of the Big Snowy Mountains. Born in Big Timber in 1921, Allen was a World War II veteran who relocated to a homestead near Cody, Wyoming in the 1950s. But Allen never forgot his ties to central Montana. Upon his death in 2019, Allen bequeathed his share of the family ranch in Golden Valley County to Shodair Children’s Hospital.

Shodair Children’s Hospital was founded as result of a similar donation 126 years ago. In 1896 pioneer grocer Louis W. Shodair gifted a home in Helena for the establishment of an orphanage. A later contribution of $200,000 from Shodair in the 1930s enabled the completion of Montana’s first children’s orthopedic hospital. Today Shodair Children's Hospital has pivoted to becoming Montana’s leading source of specialized psychiatric care and medical genetics services for children and adolescents.

According to hospital CEO Craig Aasved, Shodair’s Board of Directors knew from the outset that they would end up selling the Allen property, but there was common agreement that they wanted the property to enter the public domain.

“We’re not a real estate company,” Aasved explained. “We knew from the very beginning is was not going to be land we were going to take and hold onto.”

Aasved said he fielded several inquiries from potential out-of-state buyers interested in the Allen property, but Shodair held back hoping to ensure public access.

“We’re a Montana company,” he said simply. “We wanted it to stay in Montana, and we wanted access for the citizens of Montana.”

Guaranteeing access to public lands has become an increasing concern across the United States. A recent study by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership found that 16.43 million acres of public lands in the United States are now either partially or wholly “landlocked” by private land holdings through which no legal public road or trail passes. Forty years ago in Montana, most of land surrounding the Big Snowy Mountains was owned by small family operated farms and ranches. Property consolidation has been the theme since then with several large and wealthy out-of-state buyers purchasing large tracts of land and blocking public access. Today, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has catalogued more than three-million acres of public lands in Montana that are nearly inaccessible – including the eastern reaches of the Big Snowy Mountains.

It’s a problem the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is well aware of.

“That’s just not right,” Mueller said of so many millions of acres being cut off from public use. “The Elk Foundation has made it a priority to try and get public access to these public lands so we can all enjoy them, and to allow for better elk management and hunting opportunities.”

In 2020 Shodair contacted the Elk Foundation to see if some kind of land sale could be arranged to guarantee public access. At that same moment the children’s hospital was wading into a major expansion of its facilities in Helena. The $66 million project, which has already broken ground, will ultimately include 82 new patient beds and a medical office building which will house Shodair’s Medical Genetics Program and Helena outpatient services. Shodair has already secured $52 million in bonds for the project and raised an additional $10 million in donations. The $8.3 million the sale of the Allen property is expected to generate will push the hospital beyond the new facility’s estimated construction costs.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is serving as the liaison between private and state interests to get the deal done. The Foundation hopes to purchase the property and then simultaneously convey it to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks for the establishment of the Big Snowy Mountains Wildlife Management Area. The $8.3 million in funding for the project is expected to come in large part from Pittman Roberson Funds, which derive from an 11% federal excise tax on sporting arms, ammunition, and archery equipment, as well as a 10% tax on handguns.

“We don’t own land long-term,” Mueller said of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s financial investment in the project. “We are a catalyst. We get into the middle of the deal to try and move it along and help wherever we can – raise money, advocate, get the support, get the word out.”

“Right now, this property is still in private ownership,” Mueller clarified. “It’s owned by Shodair Children’s Hospital. There is no public access on it yet. We expect it to be completed late 2022, maybe into 2023. There’s still a lot of work to be done. When it’s completed and when it’s conveyed, the Elk Foundation would buy it from Shodair, and we would convey it to Fish, Wildlife and Parks simultaneously.”

Whether that arrangement moves forward remains to be determined. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission gave its initial endorsement to the land acquisition in 2020, but the commission has yet to give its final approval for the project. That pending decision is scheduled for the Commission’s meeting in August. Following that, the purchase must be approved by the Montana State Land Board, which likely won’t get to that decision until October.

Mueller stressed how important acquiring the Allen property would be for elk habitat and public access to the Big Snowy Mountains.

“Elk need a big landscape,” he said, “a big private/public landscape, and it takes a lot of cooperation to take care of that. There’s 5,700-acres that Shodair owns right now. It’s right south of the Twin Coulee Wildlife Management Area. That’s about 7,000 -acres right there that the BLM manages. Then there’s the Big Snowy Mountain Wilderness Study Area that the Forest Service manages. You’ve got over 90,000-acres of public lands right there. When this is finished, this landscape will turn into over 101,000-acre landscape and people will be able to enjoy it and use it a lot more.”

Elk herd management in the Big Snowies is a major concern – one that’s being continually exacerbated by the reluctance of a few large landowners to permit public access. Montana’s current Elk Management Plan calls for a target population of 800 elk in the Snowies. Current estimates are that more than 8,000 Roosevelt Elk currently inhabit the area; a number exponentially greater than the herd that was recorded in the 1990s when fewer than 400 elk wandered that country.

“Public access is a big portion of that,” FWP Wildlife Biologist Ashley Taylor said of the elk herd management challenges in the Big Snowies. “We manage a lot of our elk numbers with public hunting. Getting those public hunters on to where the elk are located has been a challenge in the Snowies … just trying to stabilize the population has been a challenge just to get that number harvested each year.”

FWP’s management plan for the Allen property includes limited motorized vehicle traffic into the property’s upper elevations, a continuation of leased grazing on the property, and property tax payments into state coffers equal to what was assessed in years past. Whether that comes to pass remains up to the discretion of the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission and the State Land Board.

“It’s about getting people on the landscape and getting to some of these great public lands that are so often locked up,” Mueller said. “For all Montanans to be able to enjoy a brand new – hopefully – Big Snowy Mountain Wildlife Management Area – boy, that is a dream come true.”

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Children's hospital and Montana elk hunters converge on plan