One of the first things Margaret Notley did when she moved to Montana over 20 years ago was take a hunter safety course.  

Her teacher had the class read a book describing the different stages of a hunter's mindset. While she doesn’t remember the novel’s name, the part that stuck with her was when the hunter eventually looks at the animal no longer wanting to harvest it.  

“They’re empathizing with the old bull, and don’t want to shoot him, because that’s them, and they’re identifying with them,” she said.  

Notley, the Flathead Land Trust board president, sees parallels when thinking about land conservation. While land is beneficial for personal enjoyment, recognizing its value beyond that is important.   

“Part of it is gratitude and giving back an appreciation for what I personally and selfishly have benefited from but also respecting and recognizing that this is something that is precious in its own right but also home to ... all sorts of other entities,” Notley said.  

Notley, a history buff, horseback rider and outdoor enthusiast, served on the Flathead Land Trust board of directors for nine years before being elected president. The volunteer position lasts for two years.

The nonprofit aims to preserve landscapes in Northwest Montana through conservation easements, which are voluntary legal agreements between a property owner and land trust that permanently restricts development.  

There are various reasons for a landowner to want an easement, but it is often a desire to preserve the land for their family. The land trust has several committees that collaborate to assess whether a property is worthy of being placed under an easement by looking at its size, soil quality, habitat type and migratory paths. 

Land conservation wasn’t always on Notley’s mind, though. Growing up in Los Angeles with a father who was a chemist and mother who was a musician, the great outdoors was not close by.  

“We never went camping,” she recalled.  

But Notley did occasionally visit her family on the rolling green hills of the English countryside. Known as green belt land, she experienced the areas protected from development left for recreation and agriculture.  

“There’s a network of public footpaths and bridleways and just access that I did not experience growing up in Los Angeles and I very much appreciated,” she said.  

Eventually moving overseas, Notley bounded around the United Kingdom for over a decade and exploring trails on foot and horseback, activities she continues to do in Montana.  

Along with earning a bachelor's degree in history at Occidental College in Los Angeles and a master’s in English at the University of York, she also took a course in landscape management at an agricultural school in England, which she found fascinating.   

“It broke down the constituent pieces of what makes the English landscape,” she said, such as the dry-stone walls that line the fields. “It’s an art form, and it also shapes the landscape.” 

Notley later experienced the outdoors like she never had before: trekking through the remote wilderness on several occasions. Without a cellphone, her and a friend one time explored the woods outside of Kotzebue, Alaska. 

“Your ego disappears,” she said. “I’ve never been so humbled as having an Alaskan coastal brown bear just look at me ... and just carry on about his business.” 

Appreciation for the outdoors brought Notley to the Flathead Valley in 2001. 

She eventually got involved with the Glacier Institute, serving on the leadership board for several years before joining the Glacier National Park Association board, which later merged with the Glacier Fund in 2013 to form the Glacier National Park Conservancy.  

Coming off a two-year term as chair of the Glacier Conservancy’s board, Notley was asked to chair the Flathead Land Trust’s board, which coincided with the organization’s 40th anniversary year. 

One of Notley’s fondest moments since assuming her new role was during an anniversary celebration held on a conservation easement along the Stillwater River, a few miles outside of Whitefish.  

"There's so many people that came to celebrate the 40th who have done so much in their own spheres over the years, but also in support of the Land Trust,” she said. “It just coalesced into a moment of: This is a good thing.” 

The Kohrs family, who own the property, conserved 600 acres of working farmland and riparian forest along the river. Notley said bears found in Glacier National Park frequent the property.  

Since January, the Flathead Land Trust has already completed four easements, which Notley said was high compared to other years. Easements are important in preserving the land that attracted many people to the Flathead Valley in the first place, she said.  

“We look at what we value and we look at what drew us to this amazing place that we live in, and it’s probably not the box stores,” she said. “We shop there. Many of us do, but they’re not the draw. The draw is the largest intact ecosystem where basically all the species from 100 or 200 years ago are still here.” 

Living in the woods on the east side of Flathead Lake, Notley said her property is one of her favorite places to enjoy wildlife.  

She’s observed teenage grizzlies wrestling, fox, lynx, bobcat and even a mountain lion.  

One day she noticed a leg sticking out of her rock garden in front of her garage. “I went to investigate, and there was a large deer carcass that had been opened and been eaten on,” she said.  

After dragging the carcass across the road, she checked a game camera situated in the garden the next morning to find “the biggest mountain lion I think I’ve ever seen walking through the garden that night, probably wondering where its dinner was.” 

“I’m very, very happy that this mountain lion and this deer were doing their natural thing in a piece of land that I, in the short term anyway, am custodian of,” she said.  

In her new role, Notley hopes to help the Land Trust’s next 40 years be as successful as the last by bringing people from all experiences to the table.  

“To which many of us have been drawn from elsewhere for the attributes that I have seen starting to slip away,” she said.  

Reporter Jack Underhill may be reached at [email protected] or 758-4407.