Forest Service, counties at odds over Plum Creek easements

The Forest Service continues to push its liberal interpretation of Plum Creek road easements on public land in western Montana. Sen. Jon Tester has stood with the counties against what amounts to a huge give away to Plum Creek, the former timber company that has morphed into one of the West's largest real estate companies.

If we can fight this one off until the Obama administration takes office, we'll be in much better shape.

Can't tell which side is worse

It looks as though the Fish and Wildlife Service is headed back to the drawing board with wolf delisting in the Northern Rockies.

I don't know which side annoys us more, the livestock groups that oppose wolf reintroduction, or the enviro groups which oppose any sort of delisting.

The reintroduction of wolves in Montana/Idaho/Wyoming has been a smashing success. It's time to delist and get on with state management of the species. Montana and Idaho are ready. Wyoming needs to get its act together.

Bridges of Butte-Silver Bow County

Landowners eye bridges across the Big Hole River, with new development the goal.

Good news on griz

A study of grizzly bear DNA in and around Glacier National Park pegs the population at more than 750 animals. That number is higher than previous estimates, and generally reveals good news about griz populations in and around the Park.

Check that sweet griz photo by the Daily Inter Lake's Karen Nichols.

Back to the drawing board on wolf delisting

The Feds will scrap their previous plan for delisting wolves in the Northern Rockies, and hopefully come up with a plan that will hold up in court. Seriously — wolf populations are healthy. Maybe too healthy in the Idaho panhandle. This success story of the most important environmental law in the history of the planet — the Endangered Species Act — won't be complete until we celebrate recovery with a delisting party.

Restoration is messy

It looks as though the restoration of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers through the removal of the Milltown Dam isn't going as well as anticipated. That's not a huge surprise. What the models predict, and what nature actually unleashes in response to change are often two different things. Just as there are unintended consequences to efforts to manipulate or profit from natural resources, there can also be unanticipated consequences to attempts to reverse environmental degradation.

There's another look at the issue here, but you need to be a High Country News subscriber to access the story.

I recall a conversation I once had with an Arizona Game and Fish Department fisheries biologist. We were talking about the trout fishery at Lees Ferry on the Colorado River, and how efforts to change Glen Canyon Dam (which creates Lake Powell) might harm that tailwater fishery, or native fish farther down in the Grand Canyon. The biologist replied to one of my questions by remarking how some seem to believe all you need to do to reverse environmental harm is to remove the offending impact, be it a dam, cattle, logging, etc. But the reality is often far different. Sometimes the changes wrought by those changes make it difficult or impossible for an ecosystem to return to its preimpact conditions. The impact sets the ecosystem on a new trajectory, and it won't return to something resembling its early condition without a lot of hard work and patience.