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|  Conservation Easements  |  Sample letter to Congress  |

Help keep the Front the way it is now!
Increasingly, important habitat along the Rocky Mountain Front is under pressure from the subdivision of private land for residential development. Conservation easements have proven to be a valuable tool for protecting wildlife and a traditional way of life by leaving land in private ownership. However, in order to capitalize on the gains already made, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in need of renewed funding to purchase additional conservation easements in the coming years. Learn how you can help this important program>>

Order a Front Discovery Guide!
In the summer of 2007, a number of local businesses, the Choteau Chamber of Commerce, and the Coalition worked together to create the Rocky Mountain Front Discovery Guide – which contains a full color map, history, and community contacts along with recreation suggestions and information for hunters, anglers, hikers, packers, birders, or anyone wanting to visit and enjoy the Front. More than 2,700 copies of the Guide have been distributed businesses throughout the Rocky Mountain Front. Receive a copy of the Guide>>

Dear (Representative Rehberg, Senator Tester or Senator Baucus):

Thank you for looking out for the interests of Montanans to develop reasonable and balanced natural resource policy. I am writing to encourage you to take a leadership role in protecting one of Montana’s most cherished places: the Rocky Mountain Front.

As you know, the Front is blanketed with old leases that continue to provoke controversy. The good news is that there is a homegrown solution.

Through the hard work of regular Montanans and private financing, we have an opportunity to retire existing federal oil and gas leases on the Front, which would resolve long-standing land-use controversies. Voluntary agreements with energy companies to relinquish their interest in the Front would protect these lands for future generations, stimulate local economic development, protect some of the nation’s finest habitat and hunter access to these lands and safeguard a century-old conservation investment. These agreements, however, need your support.

Your leadership on this issue will help protect this Montana treasure from the threat of energy development. Even if the Front’s leases were developed, their production would not lessen our dependency on foreign oil. I recognize your commitment to Montana’s natural resource base as a source of economic opportunity, and I urge you to balance that with the importance of protections some truly special places such as Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front.

Please help promote good government and land stewardship in the spirit of bipartisanship by working with our entire delegation to encourage the voluntary retirement of the Front’s leases and ensure they are not re-issued at a later date. I look forward to hearing from you on what actions you plan to take on resolving the issue of leases on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front.

Sincerely,

Your name and address