A select number of landowners control a growing percentage of Montana’s private land, according to a study recently published by the journal Environmental Management.
Lead study author Alexander Metcalf told Montana Free Press in a recent conversation that approximately 4,000 landowners in the state control two-thirds of its private land. Metcalf, a social scientist with a keen interest in natural resource management, said consolidated land ownership can give a single property owner the ability to improve or degrade wildlife habitat in “one fell swoop.” Metcalf’s research also has implications for open space and recreational access initiatives in a state that prides itself on its expansive vistas and outdoor heritage.
Working alongside another University of Montana researcher and a University of St. Thomas data scientist, Metcalf used a state-run database to analyze 20 years of property ownership records, ending in 2023. The research team then used AI to sort the records by parcel size and ownership type.
Late last month, Environmental Management published the researchers’ findings, which are based on an analysis of the approximately 370,000 distinct individuals and entities with landholdings in Montana. The state database that houses that information is called Montana Cadastral.
Twenty years ago, 100,000 individuals owned land in Montana. That figure has since ballooned to more than 160,000 individuals
Metcalf said his findings demonstrate that a “small minority” of landowners have an outsized impact on Montana’s wildlife. Wildlife is considered a “public trust” resource that the state is expected to manage for the benefit of the common good, a centuries-old legal framework that surfaces in conversations about Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ management of elk, in litigation over wolf trapping and hunting, and in streamflow-preservation efforts designed to support fisheries.
Metcalf works for UM’s Human Dimensions Lab, which studies human interactions with the environment. He said he wasn’t surprised by which individuals and corporations topped the list, but he was taken aback by how “extraordinarily large” the most expansive properties are.
“The graph never stops getting steeper,” Metcalf said. “Thirteen owners own 15 percent of the private land in the state.”
Landowners in that top-tier category include Ted Turner, the retired broadcast executive who manages his vast North American holdings with an eye toward conservation, and the politically powerful Galt family, which has deep ties to ranching and a burgeoning interest in residential development. Farris and Dan Wilks, who amassed a fortune in the oil and gas industry and use their central Montana holdings as hunting grounds, also emerged toward the top of the heap.
From a conservation perspective, the intense concentration of land ownership in Montana comes with risks and benefits, Metcalf said.
“There are lots of big bites to be had at the apple. This is not a collective action problem with 370,000 participants. The vast majority of land is owned by a handful of thousands, which is a really different ballgame,” he said. “The decisions those landowners make could have really negative consequences for wildlife in one fell swoop, but they could also have really good consequences for wildlife.”
“The graph never stops getting steeper,” Metcalf said. “Thirteen owners own 15 percent of the private land in the state.”
alexander metcalf, associate professor, university of montana, lead study author
In a recent conversation with MTFP, Hillary Rosner, an environmental journalist who studied the threats wildlife face for her recently published book Roam: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Our Fractured World, underscored wild animals’ reliance on private land.
“Eighty percent of wildlife in the United States live some portion of their life or access resources that they need on private land,” she said. “When you have these huge tracts of private land, it can be great for wildlife.”
Rosner described several ways conservation-oriented landowners can support wildlife: they can modify or remove fences to make it easier for animals to move and migrate, rehabilitate degraded rangeland to improve forage, or put their property into a conservation easement to restrict habitat-fragmenting residential or commercial development.
Rosner’s work also demonstrates how “a lack of oversight and a lack of accountability” on private land can compromise ecological webs by, for example, paving them over with asphalt or consuming the water plants and animals need to thrive.
“The decision one landowner makes can have this incredibly monumental impact, for better or worse, for these private lands,” she said.
Metcalf’s research also examined what’s happening at the other end of the graph. Parcelization, or the subdivision of formerly intact chunks of land into multiple smaller lots, is also on the rise in Montana.
Twenty years ago, 100,000 individuals owned land in Montana. That figure has since ballooned to more than 160,000 individuals, according to the study. The development of formerly open land can chop up an animal’s habitat and diminish its food supplies, decrease and pollute critical water sources, and increase the likelihood of a fatal run-in with a vehicle.
Kelly Pohl with Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman-based think tank specializing in planning and land-use issues, described Metcalf’s research as establishing a “really interesting finding” that raises questions about the cost of providing fire and public safety service to rural lots and building out water, sewer and transportation infrastructure. She said it also brings to mind Montana’s multibillion-dollar outdoor recreation economy, which thrives on open vistas, healthy wildlife populations and recreational access to wild and working landscapes.
A version of this article was first published by Montana Free Press.
