Political Quotes

“Senator Heinrich, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has been such an important tool for us to provide access to the type of situation you just described. We have about 1.5 million acres of Federal lands in Montana that are not accessible because they are landlocked. They are inholdings because of the complex nature of the checkerboard ownership infrastructure that we oftentimes see out West-- a section, 640 acres, a square mile. You have a State section, you have a Federal section, and you have a private land owner. This is working with willing landowners who want to work and find a way to consolidate some of these sections to provide better access to the public lands. We have had some great projects, like the Tenderfoot project, we call it, over by the Smith River, which is a treasure in Montana. It is kind of the Montana bucket list, to float the Smith. It is an amazing several overnights from one point to the next, an over 50-mile kind of float. I did that once, and I would love to do it again. We had the Falls Creek acquisition that is outside of Augusta. By being able to provide access through a few hundred acres or a couple thousand acres, it gets the public into tens of thousands of acres of some prime elk habitat.…”