Agriculture Magazine, Summer, 2022 - Page 19
Perry Backus Photo
The 1911-vintage tractor that rests on top a ridge just west of the Calf Creek Wildlife Management Area is on the 467 acres preserved as open space by a conservation easement completed recently by the Brien and Gayle Weber family.
Saving history: Conservation easement preserves family farm Perry Backus Ravalli Republic
This article orignally appeared in the Ravalli Republic on Mar. 12, 2017. It’s not often that the complexities behind the myriad of decisions that go into that unique marriage between public and private entities needed to create a conservation easement become so crystal clear. For a moment last week, that clarity happened through the narrow view offered via a spotting scope set up in Brien and Gayle Weber’s kitchen. Once your eye found that perfect spot behind the tripod-mounted scope, the very first thing that popped into view was a rusted 1911-vintage tractor perched a top a nearby ridge. Brien Weber’s grandfather, James,
must have been proud when he purchased the first gas-powered tractor in the Bitterroot Valley. That piece of history so visible for anyone who cares to look is a steady reminder of the Webers’ centurylong connection to this piece of land just west of the Calf Creek Wildlife Management Area. But there’s more there to be seen. As the eye tracks back just beyond the rust-colored tractor, the large elk herd bedded down in the sagebrushcovered hillside pops into view. Most of the winter range for elk and deer in the Bitterroot Valley is found on private lands along the edges of the surrounding mountainsides. Much of that has become fragmented as those traditional family farms were sold and
subdivided. “The elk come through here on a regular basis,” Gayle Weber said. “They spent some time this winter out on top of the manure pile just up behind the house. They’ve been around quite a bit over the last month.” That’s something that will never have to change. Recently, the Webers signed the remaining papers that put their 467 acres of land at the end of Hamilton Heights Road southeast of Corvallis into a conservation easement that will forever preserve the family farm as open space. The idea of putting the land adjacent to the wildlife management area had actually been broached back in the 1980s when Weber’s father, Milt, was still alive.
