MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) - The nonprofit Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has dedicated a $14 million international headquarters here, more than 20 years after its humble beginnings in a vacant dentist's office in Troy.

More than 300 people, including its current chairman and two of the founders, gathered in the foundation's new soaring, timber-framed facility at the mouth of Grant Creek in Missoula.

"We're losing land every day out there," current board chairman Buddy Smith said. "I have to tell you that this facility is our best chance to save that land."

Owning the new facility outright, instead of paying rent or a mortgage, will allow the foundation to focus more of its efforts on projects that preserve and improve elk habitat, he said. The foundation has already preserved 1,000 square miles of habitat and enhanced another 5,200 square miles.

But group members stressed they can't afford to rest on their laurels.

"We're facing a very short window right now, in that we're losing so much to development so quickly," said Charlie Decker, one of the group's four founders. "We need to be moving with a sense of urgency, because the next seven to 10 years will be critical."

A sense of urgency is nothing new for the foundation. Things got urgent pretty quickly after Decker, Dan Bull and brothers Bill and Bob Munson started the group in 1984, fashioning it after a similar group that champions wild sheep.

"The fact is, we had no real idea what we were doing, but we'd formed ourselves around this notion that we'd put out a magazine and we'd sort of obligated ourselves to it, so we had to move ahead," Bob Munson said.

He said the men would work themselves into a frazzle during the week, then spend the weekend wondering what they had gotten themselves into. But the group prospered as they reached out to hunters and conservationists, and relied on the goodness and energy of volunteers and their few employees.

The foundation soon grew out of the vacant dentist's office, a grocery storeroom and a mini mall. Eventually, it moved to a refurbished tractor garage in Missoula and then to its current headquarters complete with a shipping center, offices and a visitor center.

"This was really built on the backs of every person who has ever had anything to do with the Elk Foundation," Bob Munson said. "It's a testament to the people, and that's really what the foundation is about. I don't think I've ever met anybody involved with the foundation who I can't call a friend."