Andrew McKean to give talk about landscape conservation Wednesday

Andrew McKean, editor of Outdoor Life Magazine and a Glasgow resident, will be giving a presentation on local landscape conservation at 6:30 p.m. at Vizsla Brewing Wednesday.

"I call it a landscape appreciation day," McKean said. "... What I want to do is basically say, 'Here are the benefits of some designations of land protection.'"

The talk will be part of a wider six-part speaking tour that began last week in Billings and will end in Lewistown this Friday. McKean said that while it is a speaking tour, a more accurate description for it is in his mind.

"It's less a presentation than a dialogue, a conversation," he said.

McKean said his presentation will open this dialogue by doing two things. The first will be talking about his own experience with his local landscapes near Glasgow.

"I'm telling the story of the value of protected lands in my country, and in my experience on the basis of three different properties," he said.

These three areas are close to his home, McKean said, and they have great significance for him.

"I want to use my experience to talk about really, pretty personally, why these landscapes are so precious to me," he said, "And then, by extension, I want people to think about areas in their own communities that have that same significance for them."

McKean has personal experience with the Bear Paw Mountains, but said he wants to focus on the areas around his own home because he wants people to think about their own local landscapes that are important to them.

"I have deep and rich experience with public lands all across Montana, but, at the end of the day, I don't want to intrude on other peoples' communities," he said.

The second part of the talk will be looking back on an old Montana conservation project, McKean said.

"I'm gonna revisit a 13-year-old project that was implemented by a guy named Bill Geer, who asked sportsmen all across Montana - I think he came to Havre to talk to the Bear Paw Bowman and I think the Havre Rifle and Pistol Club in 2007 - and he asked all participants to ... basically circle areas on a map that are their homelands, their favorite places to hunt and fish, that they would protect no matter what if the hunting and fishing was ever in danger," McKean said.

McKean said that, using this plan, Geer created a map called Valued Landscapes of Montana, and he may have a modern answer to it.

"Basically, what I'm going to do is, 13 years later, reveal a more modern tool for identifying modern landscapes," he said.

McKean said a catalyst behind this speaking tour is his concern about a regional management plan by the Lewistown Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management that designates the area open to oil and gas exploration despite a lack of demonstrable and recoverable reserves.

"It's not at all a public good in the sense that there's really no return to the treasury of any of these oil and gas receipts because they never get developed," he said, "Instead, companies are just leasing on a speculative basis, the rights to drill, and then they're selling those rights to investors to basically create more value in their companies."

McKean said he believes this practice is a detriment to local landscapes.

"It's a curious almost shell game that these big oil and gas investment groups are doing on the back of our public lands," he said.

McKean said he hopes that these talks will be a call to action and get involved and pay attention to what is going on with their own local landscapes even if it's difficult to understand.

"This is something I hear from people time and again, and I'm as guilty as anybody else. These zoning documents, these RMPs, these resource management plans from various agencies, can be really opaque, they can be really boring," he said, "... I think the default position for a lot of people is to not get involved figuring 'oh, someone who knows more than I do will get involved.'"

McKean said that this attitude can have unfortunate consequences.

"If local folks don't get involved with the lands that are in your neighborhood, someone else will get involved on your behalf, and those people probably don't have the relationship that you have with that land," he said.

Conversations about this topic can leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths, said McKean.

"I don't think that's unique to Glasgow or Havre, but across (Montana), especially rural eastern Montana, people feel that wilderness designations or very restrictive land-usage designations leave people out," McKean said.

He cited complaints that he often hears about how conservation efforts can inhibit grazing, affect transportation regulations and have adverse effects on local economies. But McKean said he believe that this attitude stems from a misunderstanding of conservation and its benefits. He said he hopes this talk will change people's minds.

"Basically, it's a recognition that protected status, no matter what it is (for), has some public benefit," he said.

McKean said that, despite his passion for the subject, public speaking is not something he loves in the same way.

"My native habitat is to be in the back of the room making fun of the speaker," he said.

But he said he believes that this tour has been successful so far.

"It's achieving what I hoped, and that was to have a public discussion about things that matter to people," he said.