"International land managers learn conservation at UM seminar, on Potomac ranch"

On July 14, 2015, Keila Szpaller wrote a wonderful article about Denny Iverson. Denny was the chair of the Open Lands Committee for a time, and he also worked with FVLT to place a conservation easement on his property which was supported with Open Space Bond funds. His work has greatly benefited Missoula County throughout the years. The article is copied below. Enjoy. 

POTOMAC – It's haying season here, but Denny Iverson took some time out of his day Tuesday to tell conservationists from around the world about the night he understood he wouldn't be selling the family ranch.

Iverson, a farmer and rancher, was having dinner with friends and telling them about his retirement plan. The plan involved selling the acreage his father bought in the beautiful valley east of Missoula.

Iverson had worked the land as a child, and his own children had grown up on it. Hearing his plan that night, they protested.

"Dad, you can't sell the ranch. It's our home," Iverson remembered.

"I always get emotional about that because it was an epiphany for me. It wasn't my home, but it was their home."

The epiphany came with a problem, Iverson said. All of a sudden, his retirement plan went out the window.

To keep the land, Iverson hammered out a conservation easement with the Five Valleys Land Trust to protect the property from development. He also worked on a new plan for retirement, one that meant making the ranch more productive.

The conservation easement is an idea stewardship manager Jenny Tollefson views as a manifestation of Iverson's private property rights, his power to protect the land in perpetuity. Five Valleys is one of 12 land trusts in the state, one of 1,500 in the country, and it holds some 145 easements in western Montana.

"It doesn't matter who owns this land. Forever, it will remain ... a largely undeveloped landscape," Tollefson said.

On Tuesday, some 24 land managers who are participants in the University of Montana Wilderness Institute's annual International Seminar on Protected Area Management stood in a half circle around Iverson, on a corner of his acreage used for calving, and heard his story. 

The institute is part of the UM School of Forestry and Conservation, and the seminar examines strategies to conserve the world's special places. From its base in Missoula, the group will visit national forests, wilderness areas, the Flathead Indian Reservation and Yellowstone National Park, among other places.

"What better place than Missoula to bring this diverse group from around the world to explore public landscapes in the western U.S. as an inspiration?" said Wilderness Institute director Natalie Dawson.

***

Swapna Sarangi of India was flabbergasted that Iverson likely gave up a lot of money, possibly millions of dollars, to place property into a conservation easement.

"This is absolutely rare, beyond impossible," Sarangi said.

In India, it would be hard to imagine a property owner choosing to give up rights, she said.

"This is like, foolish," she said of the view the move would likely receive in her country.

In fact, Iverson said people in the U.S. also have called him foolish. 

"You are a blessed one to be foolish that way," Sarangi replied.

Iverson, though, tells people that if they are considering a conservation easement for the money, they're on the wrong track. And Tollefson said she views an easement as one way a landowner exercises – not abdicates – property rights.

After the group discussion, Sarangi said she planned to talk to people in India about the concept of conservation easements. She said India, too, has lessons for the U.S. in conservation.

One lesson is that farming must be done in a way that is close to nature, she said. Indians have a growing consciousness of the importance of doing so, of the dangers of pesticides in food, for instance.

"That's something India will try to do and teach to the world," Sarangi said of natural farming.

***

Members of the group also came from Palestine, Georgia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Brazil, Guyana, Israel, Zambia, Armenia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Gabon, Ecuador and Nepal. They already spent two days in Washington, D.C., to meet with the U.S. Forest Service.

"They're conservation heroes," said Jim Burchfield, dean of the College of Forestry and Conservation.

In some cases, land managers in other countries don't have any other colleagues to help them in their job to protect the landscape. They deal with poaching and human encroachment, and Tollefson said the U.S. already has dealt with similar problems.

"We've made all these mistakes," she said.

The mistakes offer lessons, and participants can find them at the seminar. People go into conservation because they love the outdoors, Tollefson said.

To protect it?

"I learned very quickly that it's really all about the people," Tollefson said.

Source: http://missoulian.com/news/local/international-land-managers-learn-conservation-at-um-seminar-on-potomac/article_cefb7687-6a11-566a-a41c-21e95a1cb2bc.html