It’s beginning to sound like a broken record -- another developer claiming his transformation of a working ranch into an exclusive second-home enclave for the very rich is a good thing.
Now a developer in Park County is asking the state to sell him two square-mile sections of public land. The acquisition will allow him to finish the “environmentally friendly” subdivision he plans there.
Wade Dokken touts his proposed Ameya Preserve in “the vast wilderness of Montana’s Paradise Valley” as “a bold new vision where nature meets culture.”
State wildlife officials disagree.
Tom Lemke, a biologist with the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks wrote that the project “would result in loss of important wildlife habitat, reduced wildlife use of the area, and new and complicated wildlife-human conflicts associated with subdivision.”
Lemke says selling the public land to Dokken will only make the problems worse.
But Dokken, who quit his day job on Wall Street as CEO of American Skandia, is offering $3.8 million for the two state-owned sections.
Guess who’s going to win? The wildlife biologist whose priority is the land and the animals or the developer who hopes to sell home sites there for up to $1.7 million.
I’ll put my money on Dokken.
If you believe everything on his Web page, Dokken is simply doing this for the good of us all.
Like an executive for the logging industry, he writes: “Our human presence can measurably add to the health of the wilderness and the majestic fauna that depend on the land.”
Make that “wealthy human presence.”
This will be another gated community.
Kind of like it used to be.
But the gate was always open when the place was the Bullis Creek Ranch. The three generations of ranchers who lived there gave anyone permission to hunt the place as long as they walked or rode horseback.
Then the land became more valuable than the cows and the ranch sold.
First to a wealthy Texan who built a mansion high on a windswept ridge where everyone could see it and then to Dokken.
His plans include a general store, spa, art center, 39 custom-designed homes along with their accompanying roads, driveways and parking lots. All for the good of the environment, of course.
And it will be built entirely up the remote drainage instead of on the valley floor on the already-established county road where the ranch families lived.
There’s certainly no better way to preserve the land than to build smack-dab in the middle of it.
Just ask Dokken.
After all, his is a bold, new vision.
Even if it does sound like we’ve heard it before.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net
Monday, August 27, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
An ode to Uncle Bob
My Uncle Bob spent the last three weeks of his life fishing.
In failing health he had been admitted to a nursing home by his daughters, who despite their love for their father, could no longer care for him.
He didn’t know a soul in the place, my cousin Mary Ann told me over the phone, so he would lie on his back with his eyes closed and go through the motions of casting his line.
“Did you see that one,” he would ask.
“Dad was still fishing,” Mary Ann told me.
Eventually he just stopped breathing and slipped quietly away during the night. That was Uncle Bob, never wanting a fuss made over him.
I can see him sitting in the bow of his 14-foot boat, a sculling paddle in one hand and a long bamboo pole in the other, dropping minnows into submerged brush piles in the shallow bays, hoisting out crappie and bass.
Uncle Bob had been a grocer in Indiana and Kentucky until a heart attack prompted his retirement from the A&P Tea Co. He and Aunt Betty bought a house in the woods near a TVA reservoir where they kept a bird dog, raised tomatoes, and fished the big lake just down the hill.
They had invited me for a visit shortly before I first got married and I was taken with the country. Western Kentucky was rolling and tree covered and we caught lots of fish.
My wife and I eventually moved to an apartment less than a mile from Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty’s place and I got a job at a marina on the lake.
For two years I lived in Kentucky and my mother’s brother became my best friend. We hunted and fished together, I helped him get in his firewood and we explored the wilder country in the area on foot.
We even picked mistletoe one winter intending to sell it, but instead traded our harvest for a case of beer at the A&P in Paducah where Uncle Bob knew the manager.
I moved to Montana for good the next summer and over the years my uncle and I lost touch. I knew he’d moved in with my cousin in Louisville a few years after Aunt Betty died and I saw him one last time in South Carolina at Mary Ann’s two years ago.
She had warned me Uncle Bob suffered from occasional bouts of dementia, but I wouldn’t have known. Although his hearing was about gone and his eyesight failing, he was the same old Uncle Bob to me.
“We sure had some good times together, didn’t we?” he asked. “I don’t hunt or fish any more, you know. I hope you still do.”
I told him yes, I hunt and fish more than I should and he said that was OK, nothing wrong with huntin’ and fishin.’
So I’m taking my uncle’s advice.
It served him well to the end of his days.
And he knew from where his blessing came. Uncle Bob paid an organist to play Sundays at the tiny country church he attended a few miles from the lake because otherwise the church would have no music.
No wonder he got to fish until the very end.
In failing health he had been admitted to a nursing home by his daughters, who despite their love for their father, could no longer care for him.
He didn’t know a soul in the place, my cousin Mary Ann told me over the phone, so he would lie on his back with his eyes closed and go through the motions of casting his line.
“Did you see that one,” he would ask.
“Dad was still fishing,” Mary Ann told me.
Eventually he just stopped breathing and slipped quietly away during the night. That was Uncle Bob, never wanting a fuss made over him.
I can see him sitting in the bow of his 14-foot boat, a sculling paddle in one hand and a long bamboo pole in the other, dropping minnows into submerged brush piles in the shallow bays, hoisting out crappie and bass.
Uncle Bob had been a grocer in Indiana and Kentucky until a heart attack prompted his retirement from the A&P Tea Co. He and Aunt Betty bought a house in the woods near a TVA reservoir where they kept a bird dog, raised tomatoes, and fished the big lake just down the hill.
They had invited me for a visit shortly before I first got married and I was taken with the country. Western Kentucky was rolling and tree covered and we caught lots of fish.
My wife and I eventually moved to an apartment less than a mile from Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty’s place and I got a job at a marina on the lake.
For two years I lived in Kentucky and my mother’s brother became my best friend. We hunted and fished together, I helped him get in his firewood and we explored the wilder country in the area on foot.
We even picked mistletoe one winter intending to sell it, but instead traded our harvest for a case of beer at the A&P in Paducah where Uncle Bob knew the manager.
I moved to Montana for good the next summer and over the years my uncle and I lost touch. I knew he’d moved in with my cousin in Louisville a few years after Aunt Betty died and I saw him one last time in South Carolina at Mary Ann’s two years ago.
She had warned me Uncle Bob suffered from occasional bouts of dementia, but I wouldn’t have known. Although his hearing was about gone and his eyesight failing, he was the same old Uncle Bob to me.
“We sure had some good times together, didn’t we?” he asked. “I don’t hunt or fish any more, you know. I hope you still do.”
I told him yes, I hunt and fish more than I should and he said that was OK, nothing wrong with huntin’ and fishin.’
So I’m taking my uncle’s advice.
It served him well to the end of his days.
And he knew from where his blessing came. Uncle Bob paid an organist to play Sundays at the tiny country church he attended a few miles from the lake because otherwise the church would have no music.
No wonder he got to fish until the very end.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Opportunistic bears climbing in windows
The Big Sky area is suffering a rash of break-ins this summer.
Blame the recent hot weather.
Most residents of the tony development near Yellowstone National Park don’t have air conditioners and have been leaving doors and windows open during the record heat wave that’s baked Montana since late June.
In an effort to stop the break-ins, three repeat offenders were even put to death.
But the criminal activity continues, says game warden Joe Knarr with Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“They go house to house until they find an open window,” says Knarr, who’s investigated dozens of break-ins at Big Sky since the beginning of July.
It’s not thieves rifling through the silverware drawer, however, that have Big Sky residents on edge. Instead, it’s opportunistic black bears climbing through windows looking for food.
So far, no one’s gotten hurt, but nine bears have been trapped and three euthanized.
Like the saying goes: “a fed bear is a dead bear.”
And while the problem in Big Sky hasn’t been tied to improperly stored dog food and bird seed or a lack of bear-proof garbage containers, the solution is even simpler: lock the windows and doors.
If it’s too hot, buy an air-conditioner. This is, after all, a community of second homes. Residents should be able to handle the extra expense.
Regulations concerning garbage storage and collection are already in effect at Big Sky, but Knarr says with so many rental units there, guaranteeing a constant influx of newcomers, a lot of folks don’t understand the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country.
A similar problem in the Rattlesnake area near Missoula a few years ago resulted in the euthanization of 15 bears and the relocation of 30 others.
Efforts to educate residents there reversed the situation.
But as more and more people move into bear country and the number of bruins increases, problems are sure to persist.
Newcomers need keep their urban edge when they arrive in the last, best place. Just like at home, lock the doors and windows, don’t leave anything out in the yard untended and participate in neighborhood watches.
However, unlike at home, report any bear sightings and get to know your neighbors.
These aren’t your typical thieves and the solution to the problem lies in getting rid of the temptation, not in locking up the offenders.
Montana’s abundant wildlife, clean air and safe environment continue to attract new residents. Unless they’re careful, the Big Sky state will become a lot more like where they came from and less and less like where they thought they were headed.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net
Blame the recent hot weather.
Most residents of the tony development near Yellowstone National Park don’t have air conditioners and have been leaving doors and windows open during the record heat wave that’s baked Montana since late June.
In an effort to stop the break-ins, three repeat offenders were even put to death.
But the criminal activity continues, says game warden Joe Knarr with Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“They go house to house until they find an open window,” says Knarr, who’s investigated dozens of break-ins at Big Sky since the beginning of July.
It’s not thieves rifling through the silverware drawer, however, that have Big Sky residents on edge. Instead, it’s opportunistic black bears climbing through windows looking for food.
So far, no one’s gotten hurt, but nine bears have been trapped and three euthanized.
Like the saying goes: “a fed bear is a dead bear.”
And while the problem in Big Sky hasn’t been tied to improperly stored dog food and bird seed or a lack of bear-proof garbage containers, the solution is even simpler: lock the windows and doors.
If it’s too hot, buy an air-conditioner. This is, after all, a community of second homes. Residents should be able to handle the extra expense.
Regulations concerning garbage storage and collection are already in effect at Big Sky, but Knarr says with so many rental units there, guaranteeing a constant influx of newcomers, a lot of folks don’t understand the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country.
A similar problem in the Rattlesnake area near Missoula a few years ago resulted in the euthanization of 15 bears and the relocation of 30 others.
Efforts to educate residents there reversed the situation.
But as more and more people move into bear country and the number of bruins increases, problems are sure to persist.
Newcomers need keep their urban edge when they arrive in the last, best place. Just like at home, lock the doors and windows, don’t leave anything out in the yard untended and participate in neighborhood watches.
However, unlike at home, report any bear sightings and get to know your neighbors.
These aren’t your typical thieves and the solution to the problem lies in getting rid of the temptation, not in locking up the offenders.
Montana’s abundant wildlife, clean air and safe environment continue to attract new residents. Unless they’re careful, the Big Sky state will become a lot more like where they came from and less and less like where they thought they were headed.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)