Weyerhaeuser has agreed to continue allowing public hunting access on most of its private forest land for another year, leaving state officials hopeful the company will move toward a more comprehensive access agreement in the future.

Since Weyerhaeuser announced its merger with Plum Creek Timber Co. last year, state officials and public access proponents have worried the new management could cause hunters and other recreationists to lose public access historically provided to them by Northwest Montana’s largest private landowner.

Kendra McKlosky, the regional access coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said Monday that Weyerhaeuser officials approached the state to renew hunting access agreements under the state’s Block Management Program, which uses money from hunting license sales to compensate landowners who agree to allow hunters to access their properties for free.

In the case of Plum Creek, those agreements have provided compensation mainly in the form of law enforcement patrols during hunting seasons, since the program would not be able to cover the cost of the private company’s massive landholdings in the state.

The agreement between Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Weyerhaeuser — still awaiting final approval at the agency’s Helena headquarters — will provide big game, upland bird and turkey hunters with free access to 709,927 acres of land in the agency’s Region One and 59,777 acres of land in Region Two.

Based on use studies from several years ago, Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimates that Plum Creek lands attract 70,000 to 80,000 hunter-days each year, not including other recreational uses.

“We’re in the infancy of this thing right now. Weyerhaeuser is the new kid on the block, and it’s huge that they’ve said yes,” McKlosky said. “We have to take this in small steps for both FWP and Weyerhaeuser. I think they’ve put their best foot forward.”

Officials with the timber company have previously stated their intent to carry forward Plum Creek’s permissive land access policies, but have not specified whether they will maintain them indefinitely.

The merger became official in February, and former Plum Creek Vice President of Northwest Resources and Manufacturing Tom Ray — now a Weyerhaeuser employee — said at the time that the combined company didn’t plan to make any changes to access policies.

Weyerhaeuser’s block management agreement is the first codification of continued public access, and McKlosky said she hopes to keep working toward an agreement to guarantee all public access in the future.

In past years, the state’s Block Management Program was used to provide comprehensive recreational access to some private lands. However, McKlosky said the state Legislature restricted the agreements to hunting access during hunting season after a 2013 audit found the program funding was being used for purposes beyond the state law authorizing it.

As an alternative, she pointed to an agreement with the Nature Conservancy adopted last August as a departmental rule by the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission. The two-year agreement provides free hunting and recreational access for the public while binding the state to a “cooperative management” plan to enforce game regulations and other restrictions on 163,883 acres in Missoula, Powell, and Lewis and Clark counties.

“Enforcement plays a major role, and we invest a lot of time in those biennial rules and spend a lot of time out patrolling,” McKlosky said. “We patrol those areas, especially during the big-game hunting season, but we also help with signage, create maps and regulations, disseminate information to the public and provide a resource for the public to find rules in the open land policy and navigate how to use those lands appropriately.”

In the absence of a legally binding agreement on general recreation, McKlosky is still optimistic Weyerhaeuser will continue to allow the same type of access granted by its predecessor.

“It is my sense that want to keep recreation open to the public, if people are respectful,” she said. “I think it will go a long way for people to show their appreciation.”

After merging with Plum Creek, Weyerhaeuser acquired about 880,000 acres of land in Montana, most of it in the Northwest corner of the state.

While remaining quiet on the details of future public access, the company indicated a willingness to work with the state earlier this year, with both parties working toward a conservation easement that would prevent development on more than 15,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser land northwest of Whitefish Lake.

The new block management agreement, if finalized by Fish, Wildlife and Parks, would go into effect Sept. 1, McKlosky said, to coincide with the beginning of the state’s upland bird season.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.