Two conservation groups that have worked together for years in Billings may be parting ways.
The Montana Audubon Conservation Education Center sits on 27 acres leased for $1 a year from the Yellowstone River Parks Association. The YRPA transformed the onetime gravel pit into a natural area dotted with lakes and trees, then worked closely with Montana Audubon in support of its educational efforts on the property.
But disputes over access to the building and grounds and disagreements over conservation goals on the site have been festering for several years.
Matters came to a head last month, when an attorney for Montana Audubon informed the YRPA that it was being evicted from the site. It was asked to remove all its property from the premises and was told that after locks on the gates and the building were changed, no one would be allowed on-site without advance permission.
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Representatives of the YRPA say they continue to support the work of Montana Audubon, and representatives of that organization praise what the YRPA has accomplished. And no one seems to welcome a public dispute.
“It’s an internal issue and it’s a shame it’s got to this point,” said Darcie Howard, director of the education center.
Roger Williams, president of the YRPA, used similar language. “It’s really embarrassing to have all this badly handled private dispute aired so publicly,” he said.
The Montana Audubon Conservation Education Center is just off South Billings Boulevard a little northwest of the South Bridge over the Yellowstone. It operates on the 27 acres leased to it by the YRPA — at $1 year for 99 years — plus another 28 acres of adjoining city parkland.
The abandoned gravel pit was donated to the YRPA by the Long Family Trust in 1999. The YRPA, in partnership with the city Parks Department and local environmental science teachers, initially developed the land as a conservation education center.
Its master plan called for the creation of 14 ecosystem habitats native to Eastern Montana. Over the years, thousands of volunteers planted tens of thousands of trees and shrubs on the property.
The YRPA began working with Montana Audubon in 2002, ultimately leading to the 99-year lease and construction of a 3,500-square-foot wet lab, the centerpiece of the Audubon’s educational program in Billings.
But as letters from the Audubon’s attorney made clear, the relationship between the two groups had been growing rockier in recent years.
Billings attorney Tom Towe, representing Montana Audubon, first wrote to the YRPA in August, outlining the Audubon’s grievances with the YRPA and explaining the legal relationship between the two groups.
The letter mentioned several specific complaints, one of which involved a disagreement last year over what to do with a beaver in one of the conservation center’s ponds. The beaver had felled something like 50 large trees and the YRPA wanted to trap and kill it.
Williams said the YRPA backed off after Howard, the center director, threatened to call the police if anyone tried to trap the animal.
Towe’s letters also mentioned objections to YRPA plans to build a bridge to an island in one of the ponds, and to instances where sprinklers were turned on while classes were underway on the site.
The letter also went into great detail in regard to plans for creating the 14 habitats on the property.
“Montana Audubon is concerned that focusing Audubon’s limited financial and personnel resources on the development and maintenance of habitats that are not extant to the Billings area and its immediate surroundings will be difficult and expensive,” Towe wrote.
He also pointed out that Audubon’s lease with the YRPA did not mention the master plan, meaning the plan was not a binding document. The lease does say Montana Audubon “shall have quiet enjoyment of the property to do with it whatever they please so long as it is not unlawful,” Towe added.
His letter also said Montana Audubon was concerned that it could be held liable “for any third party claims that may be asserted because of YRPA’s actions.”
In his second letter, dated Nov. 8, Towe said on behalf of Montana Audubon that “I would politely ask” the YRPA to remove all its belongings from the conservation education center.
The YRPA has done so, but no one seems to know how, or whether, the two groups will cooperate in the future.
Howard said that Montana Audubon’s No. 1 goal is to make full use of the wet lab. Of two large, circular rooms of roughly the same size, only one is being used for educational programs, she said. The other held Audubon and YRPA machinery, gear and supplies.
With the YRPA moved out, she said, Montana Audubon plans to build a shed for its own storage and to use the other half of the building to expand its popular educational programs.
“We’re not pushing them out,” Howard said. “We’re just asking to use the space.”
Ron Smith, secretary for the YRPA board and a longtime volunteer at the center, said it feels more like a slap in the face.
“The impression I cannot avoid is that we are not wanted,” he said.
Smith said he understood the Audubon’s need to spend its money wisely, but the YRPA has spent thousands of dollars on irrigation systems, plantings and maintenance on the site. Norm Schoenthal, a retired biology professor and an almost daily volunteer on the site, has personally paid for major portions of the improvements, Smith said.
But Howard said the Audubon has no intention of letting the carefully nurtured habitats simply die. Montana Audubon is working on its own master plan for the site, she said, and tentative plans are to maintain as many as 11 of the 14 habitat areas.
The others would almost require perpetual irrigation and costly maintenance, she said, so they will be phased out.
“The majority of plants here will be fine,” she said. “We’re not going to kill all the trees that we know the community has planted.”
She said the new plan will be released in January, and she hopes it will reassure YRPA members about the Audubon’s intentions.
“I think they’re going to find there’s not a lot of change,” she said.
Williams, the YRPA president, said his organization had its own attorney review its lease with Montana Audubon, and he concurred with Towe’s interpretation that the Audubon can assert control over the property.
“We have nobody to blame but ourselves” for drawing up the lease, he said.
Although Smith said he’s disappointed with the Audubon’s decision and isn’t ready to give up yet, Williams and Darryl Wilson, another YRPA board member, said the YRPA has so many projects in the works that it shouldn’t spend its energy fighting with the Audubon.
“I think it’s time for us to move on anyway,” Wilson said.
Earl Guss, a founding member of the YRPA, agreed with Wilson. With other projects needing attention, he said, “We’re going to go where we feel welcome.”
Gary Buchanan, who provided the YRPA with rent-free office space for 17 years, said he was disappointed, too.
“I’ve been involved in public affairs a long time and I’ve never seen anything come to such an abrupt, legal end,” he said. “I think it’s just a shame.”
Howard said she hopes to continue the Audubon’s partnership with the YRPA, but with so many people using the center — including thousands of schoolchildren — it was no longer safe or wise to allow various people unlimited access to the site.
“YRPA either didn’t understand or wasn’t willing to follow our policies,” she said.
Smith, though, said the relationship between the two groups shouldn’t have come down to splitting hairs over legalities.
Regardless of what either party was required to do, he said, the memorandum of agreement that was drawn up at the same time as the lease outlined a vision for a cooperative effort to develop the site and to develop a long-term educational program there.
“What boggles my mind is how far we’ve come from that spirit of cooperation,” he said.