Do You Give a Hoot about Wild and Open Lands?
As we kick off our Give a Hoot campaign we're excited to share how your support creates tangible impact on our large landscape initiatives across Park County and beyond: from protecting iconic wildlands like the Crazy Mountains, to enhancing habitat on public lands and working agricultural landscapes.
Unifying the East Crazies: A Milestone for Public Access and Wildlands
On January 17th, 2025, a major milestone was achieved towards consolidating the checkerboarded landscape of the Crazy Mountains when the U.S. Forest Service authorized the East Crazy Inspiration Divide Land Exchange. This exchange involves trading 3,855 acres of federal land for 6,110 acres of non-federal land, resulting in a net gain of 2,255 acres added to the public domain.
While the land trade was controversial, we believe, in the long run, it will create certainty for public access and security for wildlife. The exchange consolidates a large swath of currently inaccessible, checkerboard of private and public land into a contiguous backcountry area, removing several private inholdings that were vulnerable to development.
It secures public access with the creation of the 22-mile Sweet Trunk Trail, which will connect to other routes and enable a 40+ mile backcountry loop.
Consolidation should also lead to more effective Forest Service management. By protecting high-elevation Indigenous cultural sites and critical wildlife habitat, the exchange opens the door to better stewardship—and possibly even a more protective designation in the future.
We believe there’s a lot of common ground in keeping the Crazies quiet—with opportunities for backcountry experiences, but ultimately a landscape that remains wild, intact, and respectful of its cultural and ecological significance. PCEC is working incrementally toward that future.
While we didn’t achieve everything we sought, these tangible conservation gains would not have been possible without local people showing up—willing to listen, learn, and have hard conversations. Through that work, we built relationships and momentum that led to a far stronger outcome for the East Crazies.
Several private inholdings, including a high alpine section including Smeller Lake, become public land once the exchange is finalized.
Beyond the Wilds: Protecting Habitat from Invasive Weeds
While safeguarding wildlands remains a cornerstone of our work, true conservation today demands a deeper commitment to the quality and connectivity of all wildlife habitats, on both public lands and working ranches.
Invasive plant species displace native vegetation: eliminating vital food, shelter and breeding grounds for our wildlife. Left unchecked, they create "stuck" ecosystems that degrade water sources, increase wildfire risks and undermine Montana's multi-billion-dollar outdoor recreation and agricultural economies.
Our Healthy Ecosystems program tackles this head-on. We empower landowners with data-driven strategies to collect vital field data and ensure local landowners can use this information to make a real difference. This proactive work enhances the resilience of our wild landscapes.
By improving the health of working lands, we hope to alleviate the economic pressures landowners face that can lead to development and fragmentation of rural open landscapes—the single greatest threat to conservation, habitat quality and connectivity in our region.
Your support of PCEC during the July Give a Hoot campaign directly protects the wild lands, native habitat and wildlife that define Park County, enabling critical work like the Crazy Mountains exchange and our Healthy Ecosystems initiatives.
Give a hoot for Park County's wild landscapes and healthy ecosystems – click here to donate!