BLM to weigh swap with Montana’s largest landowner

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Montana’s largest landowner is proposing a new land exchange with the federal Bureau of Land Management after a previous one met opposition from hunters.

Farris Wilks and his brother, Dan, who own the NBar Ranch at Grass Range in Fergus County, are proposing, on a preliminary basis, to give 5,200 acres of their land to the BLM in return for 4,900 acres of BLM land.

About 3,400 acres of the Wilks property that would be exchanged is inside the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument and 640 acres is adjacent to it. The Bullwhacker Road, which is part of the land, would provide permanent access to more than 50,000 acres of public land within the monument that is currently inaccessible by vehicle.

The BLM is currently studying alignment options for a new road into the monument. The Wilks brothers are asking the BLM to add the land exchange to the list of options. With the land exchange, the BLM wouldn’t have to build a costly new road to restore access in the Bullwhacker area of the monument, the Wilkses say.

The Wilkses also propose to give the BLM 1,200 acres of private parcels that would provide more public access to Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Big Snowy Mountains to the west.

In exchange, the Wilks brothers are asking for 4,900 acres of isolated BLM inholdings, including the Durfee Hills property prized by elk hunters.

As part of the land exchange, Farris Wilks said he is proposing to open 14,500 acres of private land at the NBar to managed public hunting.

“I feel like we’ve overcompensated for whatever hunting they might lose in the Durfee Hills,” Wilks told the Great Falls Tribune.

The BLM’s Central Montana Resource Advisory Council voted in July in support of adding the Wilks brothers’ proposal as one of the options in the BLM’s study of new road access in the Bullwhacker area. The BLM has made no decision on the proposal.

The BLM scrapped a previous land exchange proposed by the Wilkses in May 2014 after members of a group called Central Montana Hunters personally delivered a petition signed by 1,600 residents who opposed it to BLM State Director Jamie Connell.