Monthly Archives: August 2008

Flathead Basin Commission hears of new coal mine

From the Friday, August 29, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .

Potential mining projects in the Canadian Flathead seem slowed for now, but a new project just outside the Flathead is in its early stages.

A British Columbia representative last week told the Flathead Basin Commission that little has developed with proposed mining projects. At the same meeting in West Glacier, representatives from a third company explained plans for a mine near the Canadian Flathead.

Read the entire article . . .

Suspect arrested in Moose City break-ins

From the Tuesday, August 25, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

A man wanted in connection to a string of burglaries to cabins in Moose City was arrested Friday after apparently spending almost a week in the wilderness along the U.S.-Canadian border.

John Paul Lynn, 44, is accused of breaking into several cabins and shooting at the long-closed Trail Creek border station, north of Polebridge.

Read the entire article . . .

County Weakens Neighborhood Plans

From the Tuesday, August 26, 2008 online edition of the Flathead Beacon . . .

Flathead County commissioners voted last week on two contentious policy issues stemming from a Montana Supreme Court ruling last January over a West Valley community group and a West Valley gravel pit.

The commission voted 2-1 to approve a zoning text amendment that states all neighborhood plans are non-regulatory.

Read the entire article . . .

Glacier Park: The next century – Threats from all sides

Another in a series of articles about Glacier National Park by Michael Jamison, this one discusses threats to the park, including things like climate change, nearby resource extraction and even road paving. From the Wednesday, August 20, 2008 online edition of the Missoulian . . .

One hundred years ago, when Glacier National Park first became a park, grizzly bears roamed along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, north into Canada, south into Sun River country, west to the Cabinets and east onto lowland plains.

Wolves wandered, too, and wolverines and big bull elk.

They had no idea someone had drawn a new political boundary onto their landscape.

They still don’t.

Read the entire article . . .

Road dust solutions elusive

From the Tuesday, August 19, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

Flathead County commissioners will adopt next fiscal year’s budget in early September, and it’s a safe bet that there won’t be money earmarked for paving gravel roads.

“The commission hasn’t changed any direction,” Public Works Director David Prunty said. “No new paving.”

Read the entire article . . .

Glacier park: The next century – Paradise in peril

From the Sunday, August 17, 2008 online edition of the Missoulian . . .

These mountains have always been old, weighed heavy with age and rooted in deep time, the kind of place where you can heft a handful of early, early earth and wonder at the world before.

Rippled rock at 10,000 feet is sediment laid down 1.6 billion years ago, the oldest rock there is, Proterozoic history heaved up some 170 million years back when the Rocky Mountains pushed skyward. A sheet of stone three miles thick and 160 miles long crashed eastward then, advancing 50 miles and folding old rock over new, creating the block from which vast chisels of ice would carve what we now know as Glacier National Park.

“That’s what people have always come to see in the park,” Leigh Welling said. “They came to look into the past, to see something pristine. To me, the park’s first century was defined by a certain stability.”

Read the entire article . . .

Peter Moore’s Wry, Relaxed Bid for the White House

From the Wednesday, August 13, 2008 online edition of the Flathead Beacon . . .

As the United States suffers from ongoing wars and a wheezing economy, the nation’s political establishment remains transfixed by such trivial presidential issues as proper tire inflation, John McCain’s $520 Italian loafers and whether Barack Obama is too skinny. It’s enough to make Peter Moore’s campaign for the presidency look downright serious.

“I’m your apolitical presidential candidate,” Moore said on a recent morning, sipping coffee on the front porch of his cabin, looking out at Glacier Park’s Livingston Range. “We give people an option to the mainstream thing.”

Read the entire article . . .

Fire season heating up

Here we go again, folks. Fire season is starting to heat up in the Flathead Valley. For current forest and wildfire information and related material, see our extensive Fire Information Links page.

From the Sunday, August 10, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

A lightning storm Friday night sparked 13 fires Saturday on the Flathead Reservation, the largest of which had burned about 400 acres Saturday evening.

Read the entire article . . .

And from the Friday, August 8, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .

Northwest Montana is heading into the thick of fire season and folks are being urged to make sure all campfires are dead out and cold to the touch.

In addition, there is absolutely no open burning in Flathead County through September, fire officials note.

On average, there’s been one human caused fire in the valley every day. The weather forecast doesn’t appear to be helping the fire risk, either. The forecast is calling for hot, dry weather with highs in the 80s and 90s and a slight risk of thunderstorms, though it should cool off a bit by Sunday.

Read the entire article . . .

Rockies wilderness at risk from latest dash for gas

From the Wednesday, August 6, 2008 online edition of The Guardian, a widely-read British newspaper . . .

It has been called one of North America’s wildest places. Just north of the US-Canada border, the wooded slopes of the Canadian Rockies channel unpolluted water into a valley that remains free of human development. Grizzly bears, cougars and wolverines prowl the banks of the Flathead river. Outside of a national park, there is probably no wilderness like it on the continent.

But outside of a national park could mean outside of legal protection. Somewhere in the workings of the British Columbia government, an application from global energy company BP is working its way around civil servants’ desks. In it, the firm outlines a proposal that has horrified local environmentalists: the installation of up to 1,500 gas wells covering an area of 500 sq km (310 sq miles) amid the lush 1,580 sq km wilderness of the Flathead. Some time during the next six months, officials may give approval to the project.

“There have to be some places on the planet where you don’t go for energy production,” says Jack Stanford, a biologist at the nearby University of Montana. “This is one of them.”

Read the entire article . . .