Independently reported news stories of Montana's people, land, water and wildlife.
The combination of the recession of a few years ago and repeated Congressional budget cuts have left national parks in poor shape headed into the National Park Service’s centennial, according to a new report.
On Friday, the National Park Service released its annual report on the deferred maintenance that has piled up over a number of years and the huge sums of money needed to overcome the backlog.
Read MoreA new study backs up recent grizzly-bear finding that dangerous encounters with predators can be minimized if people are taught how to be smarter.
On Wednesday, University of Calgary bear-attack expert Stephen Herrero published a study detailing almost 70 years of large carnivore attacks and showed that at least half were brought on by human themselves. His aim is to quell the fear of carnivores that some people develop if they don’t understand animal behavior or how to avoid dangerous situations.
Read MoreLast week, to the relief of many Montana hunters and pilots, the Central Montana Bureau of Land Management rejected for a second time any land trade proposed by billionaire landowners Farris and Dan Wilks.
Mark Albers, manager of the BLM’s Hi-Line and Lewistown districts, told the Central Montana Resource Advisory Council on Jan. 26 that the BLM didn’t have the resources to properly review and manage such a trade. Land exchanges require a lot of time and resources, and the Wilks’ plan was particularly complex because it involved parcels in different counties, Albers said.
Albers isn’t lying.
Read MoreA number of passions have their “porn”- photos or films of epic adventures that most will never experience. For the next few weeks, Montanans will cast off their lined Carhartts and cabin fever and get a taste of summer while watching the 2016 Fly Fishing Film Festival with other angling fanatics.
But amid the documentaries showing men perfecting marlin fishing off the Virginia coast or howling over bass fishing in Guyana, one film steps back a little from the fish fetish to present a call to action.
Read MoreThis spring, 40 Montana sage grouse hens will be looking for love in Canada.
On Thursday, the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks commission voted to approve the transplant of 40 sage grouse to Alberta, Canada, as part of an effort to bolster Canadian populations. The 3-1 vote went against a recommendation made by the legislative Environmental Quality Council on Wednesday to ban all such transplants for the next three years.
Read MoreMontana legislators are asking for a three-year ban on transplants of sage grouse outside the state.
On Wednesday, after another fractious discussion of sage grouse conservation efforts in Montana, Sen. John Brendan, R-Scobey, proposed that the legislative Environmental Quality Council send a letter to Gov. Steve Bullock and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks asking for a three-year moratorium on sending sage grouse out of state. The letter passed on a 10-5 vote.
Read MoreAn Idaho court ruling showed that the state of Montana did the right thing when it agreed to protect threatened Canada lynx from accidental trapping.
In a Jan. 8 ruling, Idaho federal District Judge Lynn Winmill agreed with environmental groups that Idaho’s trapping regulations were insufficient to protect lynx from being trapped accidentally in the Clearwater and Panhandle regions of the state. The judge ordered the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to spend the next 90 days working with the plaintiffs on trapping limits to prevent what the Endangered Species Act calls “incidental take” of lynx. In the meantime, trapping is suspended in those areas of Idaho.
Read MoreMontana’s legislators may need to extend a self-imposed deadline to help Montana’s tribes secure their water and avoid years of litigation.
The legislative Water Policy Interim Committee learned Monday that three tribes could be forced to sue the state if the Montana Water Court finalizes water-rights decrees before Congress ratifies the tribes’ water compacts.
Read MoreJust a month or so after the Blackfeet successfully defended culturally valuable places along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front from oil and gas development, they may have to do the same once again to preserve some mountains to the east.
On Thursday, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management proposed extending for another 20 years an order that locks up undeveloped mineral rights on almost 20,000 acres of public land in the Sweet Grass Hills of north central Montana.
Read MoreTwo weeks after the state of Montana decided Yellowstone bison could roam year-round in the area outside West Yellowstone, an interagency group decided almost 1,000 bison needed to be killed this winter.
Members of the Interagency Bison Management Plan decided once again that 600 to 900 bison needed to be eliminated from the herds of Yellowstone National Park to reduce the population below the 4,900 estimated to reside in the park.
Read MoreTo the surprise of some, Congress passed a few laws to help keep Montana’s land whole and its families on the land.
Since Congress allowed the Land and Water Conservation Act to sunset in September, some have wondered how to save what’s left of rural Montana. But on Friday, the U.S. Senate joined the House of Representatives both in extending the LWCF at least short-term and in allowing tax incentives for conservation easements to become permanent.
Read MorePilot projects to test the new elk shoulder seasons are barely a week underway, but Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is already planning more than 10 times as many shoulder seasons next year.
At Thursday’s FWP commission meeting, Big Game Chief John Vore ran through an extensive list of elk hunting districts where shoulder seasons would be opened as early as August 2016 and run through the following March. The shoulder seasons would be effective for the next four years, although Vore said the commission could terminate a season at any time.
Read MoreMontana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has put a hit out on introduced walleye in Swan Lake.
At Thursday’s FWP commission meeting, commissioners unanimously approved a regulation requiring anglers to kill any walleye they catch in Swan Lake, report the incident and then turn the carcass in to FWP for analysis.
Read MoreThanks to increased effort this year from wardens and landowners, elk hunting east of Canyon Ferry was a little less chaotic. But some hunters questioned whether one landowner is playing loose with the rules.
Tempers flared often in 2014 after limited access to hundreds of elk in Hunting District 392 east of Canyon Ferry resulted in shootouts involving dozens of hunters and repeated hunter-landowner conflicts. This year, landowners and Fish, Wildlife & Parks worked to ease the situation by handling the hunt differently.
Read MoreThe 25-year-old Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee realized it has long overlooked some important aspects of doing business. Now it’s working on giving its members clearer guidance, which they’ll need if grizzly bears are delisted.
On Tuesday in Missoula, the 23-member Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee wrestled over how to compensate for chaos both within the committee and without after members voiced the need for better definition of the roles of the executive committee and the regional subcommittees that have been attempting to recover the grizzly bear for a quarter century.
Read MoreStates can’t usually sell oil and gas leases located in other states, but thanks to a gift, Montana will take advantage of North Dakota’s boom and use the lease money to help kids learn to fish.
Read MoreA few weeks after Arch Coal indicated that it might declare bankruptcy, a subsidiary transportation company has asked that the permitting of the Tongue River Railroad be suspended.
On Tuesday, the Tongue River Railroad Company asked the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to suspend the permitting process for a rail spur that would allow Arch Coal to ship coal from the proposed Otter Mine to Colstrip and points west, according to a company release.
Read MoreIn a win for tribal cultural rights, the U.S. Department of the Interior said Monday that it intends to cancel an oil and gas lease on national forest land in the Badger-Two Medicine region. The cancellation could be finalized by the end of the year, but a District of Columbia federal court must sign off on it.
Read MoreResidents of the Blackfoot and Swan valleys want to designate more wilderness around them, but they say it would be part of a bigger plan to preserve their lands and rural way of life.
On Wednesday night, more than 100 people packed into the Missoula Public Library conference room to learn about a renewed push by the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project to add 83,000 acres of wilderness to the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Mission Mountain wildernesses.
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Photo credit: Terry Tollefsbol / NPS
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks seek information on the poaching of a male grizzly bear in the Swan Valley.
The bear was found dead about 10 miles north of Seeley Lake along Highway 83 on Nov. 6. Investigators retrieved the carcass and discovered the bear had died about two weeks ago – between Nov. 3 and Nov. 5 - of a gunshot wound. The bear has been sent to the FWP laboratory in Bozeman for further analysis.
Grizzly bears are protected under the Endangered Species Act so intentionally poaching a grizzly bear is a federal felony.
FWP and the USFWS ask that anyone with information on the killing call 800-TIP-MONT. Callers may remain anonymous and may earn a reward of up to $2,000 if the tip leads to a conviction.