Montana
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With both Senator Daines and Congressman Gianforte sponsoring legislation to remove wilderness study designation for some Montana Forest Service and BLM lands, it behooves us to consider what is at stake. These lands are some of the finest wildlands left in the Nation. Protecting Montana’s wildlands is good for the ecology and economy of the…
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Wild bighorn sheep once were found throughout the West. Roaming high alpine ridges of the Rockies to the badlands of the Dakotas to the deserts of Arizona and California, bighorns were adapted to a wide variety of climates and terrain and some estimate they numbered in two million or more animals. But these iconic western…
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Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post. In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects. Most of the wildfires burning under low to…
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NASA just reported the drought in eastern Montana is so severe it is a once in a century event. Not surprisingly, despite livestock grazing that some suggest could preclude large blazes, the drought in Eastern Montana has spawned some recent blazes including the 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire. The fire raced across grazed public and private pasture…
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The 4th Annual Speak for Wolves will take place on July 27-29, 2017 in the Historic Union Pacific Dining Lodge in West Yellowstone, Montana. This annual wildlife advocacy conference in the heart of Yellowstone is a family-friendly event featuring guest speakers, live music, food, poetry, book readings, panel discussions and a field trip. Registration is…
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The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has decided to delist the Yellowstone grizzly bears, removing them from the protection given by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). And state wildlife agencies in Wyoming and Montana are anxious to start sport hunting the bears. If you follow environmental politics, it is very clear why industries like the…
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Many rural counties with sizeable amounts of federal lands within their jurisdictional boundaries depend on federal payments to support basic services like fire, police, schools, and the like. The main programs include the Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT), Refuge Revenue Sharing, Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (SRS). One of the…
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When I was in college at the University of Montana in Missoula, I had a housemate named Tom. Tom was a wilderness fanatic like myself. We both loved exploring the wildlands that surround Missoula. Tom had a map on the wall where he drew a circle that encompassed a hundred-mile radius around Missoula. Tom…