Environmental Stewardship & Conservation

To us, Montana feels like home. Majestic mountains views, deer rustling in the woods, clear streams and skies are part of the reason we’re here. But in today’s industrial world, enchanting places like this are diminishing – fast. At Moonlight Basin, we’ve taken responsibility for protecting and preserving the land that has given us so much. By relying on the guidance of environmental experts and habitat and environmental organizations, we’re able to make better-informed progressive environmental management decisions, as well as monitor and confirm the success of those decisions.

Future generations deserve to experience our magical valley. That’s why well over half of Moonlight Basin’s original 25,000 acres of private land rests safely in conservation easements. We’ve protected far more land than we plan to ever develop, and we’ve carefully restricted our development to our current footprint. Conservation efforts have also maintained a wildlife corridor between the two sections of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, potentially threatened by the original sale of the property. Wildlife roams freely both in the conservation easements and in our remaining 8,000 acres as we’ve purposely preserved the corridors that connect low wintering grounds to high elevation summer habitat.

With preserving the environment in mind, we’ve launched a bevy of other efforts to reduce our overall footprint:

Moonlight Basin offsets 100% of lift use with renewable energy credits from NorthWestern Energy’s E+ Green Power Program.

The golf course maintenance shop conserves water with a state-of-the-art water recycling system that recovers the water used to wash vehicles with a closed loop system.

The golf course also captures irrigation runoff, by collecting excess water sprayed onto the course in a subsurface drainage system and returning it to the irrigation reservoir for future use.

Moonlight Basin partners with Skyline to offer free year-round public transportation between Bozeman and Big Sky. This partnership eliminated the equivalent of 2482 one-way trips through the Canyon in January 2008 or about 34 auto trips across America. The Skyline Link served more than 6500 riders in December 2007, saving more than 25 tons of CO2 emissions.

Moonlight Basin oversees a recycling program that keeps 79% of our Big Sky offices’ waste from the local landfill. At our mountain lodges, guests can pitch in by recycling in our bins for plastics, paper, aluminum cans and cardboard.

Moonlight Basin endeavors to incorporate recycled building materials into several of our structures. For instance, the Headwaters Lift is a previously used lift and the terrain park features are built from recycled materials, including old propane tanks from a landfill.

Awards & Recognition
Moonlight Basin’s steadfast commitment to environmental stewardship and preservation has been rewarded with a number of local recognitions:

2009 Certificate and Award from the Yellowstone Business Partnership for our graduation from the The UnCommon Sense Program: This program equips businesses to make desired changes in their operations and empowers them to become sustainability leaders in their communities and industry sectors.

2008 MSU Extension Service's EcoStar Award:
Moonlight Basin received the EcoStar pollution-prevention award in recognition of our commitment to surpassing state and federal requirements to reduce waste, conserve resources and energy, and keep our big skies clean.

2005 NSAA Silver Eagle, Fish & Wildlife Habitat Protection:
Moonlight Basin was honored with this award for rehabilitating our large landscape, formerly damaged by years of abusive logging, prior to Moonlight Basin’s ownership. This award also recognized Moonlight Basin’s commitment to environmental stewardship when we placed over 85 percent of our property into permanent conservation easements and other protected standings.

2004 NSAA Silver Eagle, Visual Impact:
Moonlight Basin received this award for our intense forest recovery program, environmentally sensitive trail design, and strict building requirements.