“We decided to sign a conservation easement because we saw it as a way to hang on to our property and enjoy it as a family,” says Steve Hess, who along with his wife, Bonnie, owns 1,360 acres of ranchland in the Centennial Valley.

In March 2004, the Hess family signed a conservation easement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that paid them to forego certain development rights on their scenic property, once part of Ted Turner’s Snowcrest ranch.

Likewise, their son-in-law, Bill Clarno, and his partner, Randall Bergeson, have secured a similar FWS conservation easement on their 640 acres of adjacent land.

“We’re glad to have these working ranches added to the network of conservation-easement protected private lands in the Centennial,” said Gary Sullivan, who negotiated the agreements for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

These lands, on the valley’s north side, include forests, canyons and sagebrush meadows, and provide habitat for sage grouse, elk, mule deer, black bear, an occasional grizzly, moose and other wildlife. Beaver and trout live in Clover and East Clover creeks.

“These properties have everything – lots of wildlife, riparian areas, aspens and sage grasslands,” says Tim Swanson, the Conservancy’s southwestern Montana program manager, who helped broker the Hess conservation easement.

In addition to conserving this important wildlife habitat, the easement allows for the continued cattle operation and limited logging, but no mining or major building.

"At first we shied away from the idea of [a conservation easement], but as we got more information and began talking to our lawyer and tax advisor, we started to see the advantages,” says Hess.

The easement value, based on an independent appraisal, was high enough for the Hess family to reduce their debt and keep the land, which in turn enabled their daughter and son-in-law to continue their grazing lease.

This easement is also significant because it involves a landowner “who is respected in the area and very involved in agricultural and conservation issues,” says Sullivan. “Steve is in tune with progressive management techniques and his land reflects that good management.”

Hess is involved in the Beaverhead county and state committees of the USDA Farm Services Agency. He is also president of the Centennial Valley Association, a local landowner group which has held meetings to, among other things, inform people about conservation tools.

As such, Steve Hess has heard the criticisms against conservation easements. “There are concerns that people are seeing the money, but are not thinking about the long-term effect.”

“I think people need to get all the information they can about conservation easements. You’ve got to go into it with your eyes wide open,” says Hess.

In the last Montana legislative session, a bill to restrict conservation easements was introduced, but failed. A version of that bill is likely to be reintroduced next session, and Hess hopes it will fail again.

“People in agriculture are already confined. We need all the tools we can get. And frankly, we don’t want the government telling us what we can and can’t do.”

“We don’t know what might happen in the future, say if we decide to sell the place. We don’t know how the easement might affect its salability.”

But the bottom line, insists Hess, is that “we just couldn’t stand it if this land was broken up.”