Majority Republicans in a conference committee advanced a heavily amended bill Tuesday disfavoring lawsuits to enforce public recreation access through prescriptive easements. Under Montana law, a prescriptive easement allowing access across private property is established by "open, exclusive, notorious, hostile, adverse, continuous, and uninterrupted use" for a period of five years. Experts estimate thousands of written and unwritten prescriptive easements exist in the state, with a wide variety of purposes including access to livestock on neighboring private property or public recreation access. Senate Bill 354 brought by Sen. Steve Hinebauch, R-Wibaux, has seen extensive changes since it passed the Senate in early March where it picked up some Democratic support to go along with majority Republicans. The goal of the bill, he said at the time, was to ensure that prescriptive easements providing access for a particular reason did not lead to unwanted access for other purposes.