Wilderness fans gear up

Anticipating a more friendly president will soon reside in the White House, wilderness advocates are polishing up proposals for a new Montana wilderness bill. Sure to be considered is this proposal for the Rocky Mountain Front.

Plum Creek the good guys?

Leave it to the Bush administration to make even one of the environmental movement's favorite whipping boys look good in the waning days of this dismal presidency. Plum Creek officials now say the timber company won't use logging road easements to access forest lands for development, even while Agricultural Undersecretary Mark Rey keeps pushing for the deal.

Merry Christmas

We would have offered a non-denominational salutation, but fear drawing the wrath of Bill O'Reilly. We're signing off for the year. But don't worry, we'll be back stronger than ever in 2009.

Cheers,
Rob

More wolf news

More from Kalispell on the ever-expanding wolf population in northwest Montana. There's so many wolves FWP is having a hard time counting them all here, and the ongoing battle for delisting here.

Booming wolf populations anger hunters

It's well past time wolves were delisted and management of this successfully recovered, formerly endangered species was given to states with responsible management plans — Montana and Idaho. A story in Sunday's Daily Inter Lake examines the growing anger among hunters who are encountering a growing wolf population in the wild. With the population booming and wolf encounters growing exponentially, frustration, and more importantly, opposition to wolves in the wild will grow.

What wolf advocates need to understand is that their knee-jerk opposition to wolf management — including the responsible action taken by FWP to kill an entire pack in the Kalispell region with a chronic taste for cattle — is doing more harm than good for the species. Wolf fans need to come to terms with the fact that wolf recovery will include wolves being killed. Wolves will be killed by hunters and game managers as we work to keep the population at a manageable level.

One of the lessons we're learning with wolf reintroduction is that recovery was the easy part. Management of recovered wolves, now that's another story.

Slough still closed?

I doubt there is a court in Montana that would find you guilty if someone pressed "No Trespassing" charges against you for fishing Mitchell Slough. But really, if you can't wait for the final phase of the legal process to unfold, and have to fish there right not, as winter finally arrives in Montana, I'd say you've got a little too much time on your hands.

Stream access wins big

Here's a column I wrote for Writers on the Range about the recent court decision on Mitchell Slough.

Nice weather, slow season

It's been a mild fall in Montana. That's great if you don't like shoveling snow or skiing, but lousy for hunting.

Another reason for delisting

Wolves are hitting one Big Hole rancher particularly hard. This is just another reason why it is important to get wolves delisted. Each example similar to this becomes more ammo for the anti-wolf crowd. Delisting and a wolf hunting season would get wolf supporters an effective rejoinder.

And more debate about the number of livestock kills by wolves.

Tester keeps the heat on Plum Creek give away

Sen. John Tester is seeking an investigation into the Plum Creek easement deal.

Farm Bureau not pleased with Slough ruling

Landowners along Mitchell Slough aren't talking about the Supreme Court ruling yet. But the Montana Farm Bureau made it clear it was not pleased with the ruling in this press release.

Good news in the Bitterroot

The Montana Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, overturned a lower court decision that blocked access to Mitchell Slough, a side channel of the Bitterroot River. This ends the latest chapter in the long-running debate at Mitchell Slough regarding its status under the Montana Stream Access Law. Hunters and anglers have long argued that the Slough is governed by the SAL. Landowners along the Slough, most notably rocker Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News fame, have in recent decades tried to prevent public access.

The lower court ruled that the Slough was no longer a "natural" waterway as it has been altered by irrigators in the Bitterroot for more than a century. But the Supreme Court shot down that "logic" as it would have meant every river or stream in Montana that has been altered by man (ie. all of them) might no longer be covered by the law.

Flathead Open Space going fast

Flathead County residents will vote on a $10 million open space bond on Nov. 4.

The bad news is that the Flathead is one of Montana's most conservative counties, with a definite hostility toward government taking ownership of private land or private development rights — even when that exchange involves willing sellers.

The good news is despite that anti-government bias, polls show two-thirds of county residents support the idea.

Let's hope the polls are right.

Mack Days is on

Here are the early results from the fall Mack Days at Flathead Lake.

The kill-em-all fishing contest is geared toward reducing the number of highly predatory, non-native lake trout, which are taking a major toll on the lake's dwindling populations of native bull and westslope cutthroat trout.

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.