Montana
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Rare Fish Still Threatened by Massive Water Diversions from Big Hole River BUTTE, Mont.— The Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, Butte resident Pat Munday and former Montana fishing guide George Wuerthner today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the agency’s latest decision to deny protection to a…
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This August the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reversed an earlier 2010 ruling that Arctic Grayling in the Upper Missouri River system of Montana were endangered (but precluded from listing under the Endangered Species Act due to higher priority species). Instead the Service decided that as a result of cooperative efforts by ranchers in…
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Hunters split. So were wolf advocates- The wolf stamp hearing is over. It was teleconferenced. It seems like those for it were about equal to the number of opponents. Just as interesting is the hunters were divided on it, and so were wolf advocates. The split among the latter has been mirrored at the Wildlife…
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By Brooks Fahy, Executive Director, Predator Defense Recently one of our county’s most highly respected environmental organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), proposed that wildlife advocates improve the plight of wolves in Montana by purchasing a special wolf “conservation” stamp for $20. The money raised would allegedly be used to resolve wolf conflicts nonlethally,…
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Black Angus standing under crab apple trees felled by a single bolt- Last week a mixture of 45 cows and calves were killed near Darby, Montana by a lightning strike. When hit, they were standing close together under some crab apple trees. While this is a fairly large loss, especially from a relatively small herd,…
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Despite an executive order signed by Governor Steve Bullock on May 22 that restricts Montana Department of Livestock agents from entering “private property without landowner permission unless there is an imminent threat of disease transmission from bison to livestock or people”, Montana Department of Livestock agents trespassed onto the property of West Yellowstone resident Ed…
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Bison allowed to wander Jackson Hole, WY at will- We have written about bison in Wyoming versus inside Montana a number of times, but not for a couple years. Because of the constant public hostility of Montana’s Department of Livestock (the DOL) and the less-than-in-depth reporting by Montana traditional media, folks probably forget that Montana’s…
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Recently I received an alert from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) asking me to send a letter to the Montana Dept of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) requesting a slight reduction in their wolf killing/trapping quota outside of Yellowstone Park. The main rationale of the alert was that wolves were important to the local economy…