Blending Nature with Development: A New Land Stewardship Ethos Emerges

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On a sparkling June day in 2002, Donald Miller took a seat on a battered crate he had put down outside a dilapidated, weather-beaten barn, at the northern end of the Gallatin Valley in the vast, mountainous stretches of western Montana. His calves vanished into lush grass. His upturned face was a corona of white hair and beard.

He listened to Clark Stevens, 43, an architect from Los Angeles whose baggy grey pants and a beige pullover were both covered with pockets for fly fishing paraphernalia — a pastime that had drawn him to Montana. Stevens described how, with careful planning, Miller’s 300 acres could nurture trout and attract wildlife, while at the same time hosting carefully sited homes that would vanish behind a low ridge or stand almost invisibly behind a line of cottonwood trees.

Miller could have sold quickly to developers, since his land edged the growing fringe of Bozeman. But the rancher feared that a traditional developer would simply cut the trees, plow under the lush grass, and bulldoze the stream remains into a culvert. He didn’t want his land to be the site for a line of houses or a few rows of concrete-block mini-storage sheds on a plaza of asphalt.

Miller had come from a ranching family and had worked these acres for decades. Then, approaching his 70s, he was getting too old. He would have preferred to sell his land to another rancher, but cattle ranching on huge tracts as far distant as South America had made operating so little acreage unprofitable. He liked Stevens’ idea because it would create affordable housing that would let people appreciate what he’s loved about the land all these years. “Whatever we call it, it will have a sign that reads ‘ungated community,’ ” Miller said.

Stevens, the architect, and Miller, the rancher, are among a new breed that cross the divide between traditional environmentalism and development because they recognize common values. They’re far from alone. An increasing number of public-spirited institutional and private investors seek to marry enterprise and environmentalism, stretching the possibilities of pure preservation. These pioneers are trying out new ways to sensitively nurture a vibrant economy in some of the nation’s most naturally gorgeous places. And in the process of creating what are now called “conservation developments,” they are redefining land use regulations and real-estate finance. They’re broadening the conservation ethos, rethinking the human presence in the natural landscape.

Most conservation developers focus on local projects. Yet these investments are drawing attention from the largest financial institutions, like Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Bank of America, as these large firms seek to hedge conventional investments with a variety of forays into the emerging “green” economy.

“Five or six years ago, conservation-development projects were very rare,” explains Lawrence Selzer, president of the Arlington, Virginia-based Conservation Fund, a non-profit that seeks to promote both conservation and economic development. “It won’t knock off subdivision housing, but the demand is rising dramatically.”

This kind of development is not easy — yet. Clark Stevens’ vision for Donald Miller’s land never became a reality, even though it is much more in keeping with Bozeman’s back-country identity than is the shopping strip that hugs the interstate on the other side of town with its paste-on ski-lodge timber cross braces.

From a real-estate development point of view, though, Stevens’ plan looked like a leap of faith instead of a deal. Stevens tried to cobble together a grant from the highway department, which meant that a federal agency would have to decide if the stream restoration met the legal definition of a wetland. In addition, the development would have had to leap a variety of regulatory hurdles. And Stevens would have needed a partner with a lot of cash, since the project would not pencil out if subjected to the analytical method that traditional developers use.

After years of juggling the possibilities Stevens offered, the Millers, facing declining health and rising doctors’ bills, sold to a developer with a far less adventurous plan than Stevens had proposed. “They got the cash they needed,” said Stevens, “and I learned a few things.”

Many projects in this nascent movement are small, or near misses like Miller’s ranch, but the lessons learned may soon be applied on much larger landscapes as investors begin to appreciate the greenbacks that green development can generate. “Between traditional conservation and traditional development there is great potential in blending conservation with development,” says Carl Palmer, a cofounder with Robert Keith of Beartooth Capital, one of the few conservation-oriented real-estate investment funds.

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