Plum Creek Timber, which just negotiated a giant conservation deal with green groups, has also made a closed-door deal with the U.S. Forest Service that could ease the way for development on thousands of acres of Montana forestland. For decades, the USFS has enforced restrictions on logging roads that allow them to only be used for timber management. But under the deal expected to be formalized next month, logging roads on Plum Creek-owned land could be paved — easing residential access to deep-woods summer homes. Plum Creek, a former logging company which now focuses on real-estate investment, says that in the next five years, it’s likely to sell no more than 3,000 of its 1.2 million Montana acres to developers. But environmentalists are skeptical. “Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we’re kind of missing the loggers,” says Ray Rasker of nonprofit Headwaters Economics. “A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes — that’s going to be that way forever.”
