Once attacked for turning Malcolm Forbe's estate into an eye-sore trailer park, Montana's most celebrated New Age cult has just sold the 7,000 acres of pristine land to the State of Montana for a cool $7 million -- and won rave reviews from the establishment. The biggest losers are some 1,000 wild bison whose numbers have been halved by starvation and an officially-sanctioned slaughter. PNS correspondent Thomas Goltz writes on the post-Soviet Caucasus and is author of The Azerbaijan Diary. He makes his permanent home in Montana.

CORWIN SPRINGS, MONTANA -- The audience was like a "Who's Who" in American environmental and preservation circles: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Yellowstone Park supervisor Mike Findley, the head of the National Forest Service, officers and members of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the governor, a senator, a congressman -- scores of devotees of the wilderness and Yellowstone Park.

The occasion was the official transfer of 7,000 acres of pristine land at the northern mouth of the park to the National Forest Service, providing a vital migration corridor for thousands of elk, deer, big-horn sheep and antelope seeking their winter range.

Conspicuous by their absence from the list of beneficiaries of the deal were the park's remaining 1,000 wild bison, whose number has been halved over the past few years by starvation inside the park and officially-sanctioned slaughter just outside.

Conspicuous by their presence, most dressed in some shade of Holy Purple, were members of Montana's most celebrated New Age cult, the Church Universal Triumphant (CUT) which had just sold the 7,000 acre parcel to the government of the United States for a cool $13 million. More valuable for the CUT was the favorable limelight.

"What a super organization!" gushed Senator Max Baucus. "What a wonderful, wonderful bunch of people!" he said of the thousands (no one knows the real numbers) of members of the secretive spiritual society.

Baucus may have been the most effusive of the dozen speakers at the August 31 event, but he was by no means the only one to heap praise on the New Age cult. Speaker after speaker spoke of an "historic moment", "trusting relationship," and "honest purpose."

What a change. In the old days, CUT was attacked for turning the glorious Malcolm Forbes ranch into an eye-sore trailer park. CUT purchased the property in 1981 after the U.S. government declined to buy the spread. Thousands of CUT devotees from throughout the world came to go into state-of-the-art underground bomb shelters in order to survive the nuclear holocaust predicted by their founder and leader, Elizabeth Claire Prophet.

When Armageddon failed to occur, church members emerged from their shelters convinced that their "channeling" to "ascended masters" had saved the world.

If the construction of millions of dollars worth of cellar-space was a good chuckle, other aspects of the survivalists' world view gave neighbors pause. Prophet's second (now former) husband, Ed Francis, was charged with violating federal gun control laws when he was picked up transporting heavy weapons across state lines, presumably for a fortress-like bunker outside the nearby town of Emigrant.

The CUT started cleaning up its act in the mid-1990s, following the burndown in Waco, and began a serious "glasnost" like program in 1995.

They were probably moved by fear of losing tax-exempt status and rumblings among former members about financial filly-fally. The CUT demands a strict communal existence from its members -- as well as voluntary "gifting" of money and property to the church. Most members were deeply chagrined to learn that they could not sell their Montana properties, above or under ground, unless all members inhabiting a particular piece of land agreed.

The situation grew grimmer when two of Prophet's daughters deserted and dozens of "CUT kids" in their teens set up what might be termed an anti-CUT group in nearby communities.

Then came the great winter of 1995-96 -- and with it CUT's salvation. Thanks to natural factors and park policy, the last of the wild American bison had built its members back up to around 3,000 -- the largest number in decades. But the winter of 1995-96 was cruel, with sudden thaws followed by sudden freezing, leaving thick plates of ice over the park's already over-grazed grasses. Although a bison can move tons of snow with its head, the ice proved impervious to hoofs and horns. Starving, the great beasts, as they have for thousands of years, headed for the lowlands north of the Park to force their way out to winter forage.

Unfortunately for the bison, researchers had determined some years before that the bison can transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle if they are force-fed infested embryos in laboratory circumstances. Even more unfortunate, the State of Montana has a contradictory policy -- while some elk herds with a near-100 percent rate of infection with brucellosis freely roam in and out of the Park, there is zero-tolerance for the disease in bison, so that any of the great beasts that wanders out of the park is either forced back in or shot. And since 1995-96, most of these shootings have occurred on CUT land.

Thus geography allowed a paranoid New Age sect from California to make common cause with Montana ranchers. And, because the slaughter had to be undertaken by federal employees, CUT began to deal with Park, Forestry and Fish and Game services on a professional level.

Their search for acceptance has borne fruit with the $13 million deal -- thanks largely to the efforts of Sen. Baucus, whose name now appears on CUT brochures under the words, "The Church and its members have endeared themselves to all who cherish Yellowstone's unequaled natural environment." Should anyone doubt the quote, after the turnover ceremony Baucus posed for pictures with any CUT member who wanted -- including Elizabeth Claire Prophet herself.

The Church Universal Triumphant had come of age, or at least traded land for legitimacy. Now, who's going to rescue the bison?