Montana raised the wolf hunt bag limit to five wolves per person, but added restrictions near Yellowstone National Park. The maximum number of wolves that can be taken in the North Fork remains at two.
Here’s the Flathead Beacon’s write-up . . .
Montana Fish and Wildlife commissioners on Wednesday increased the bag limit from one to five wolves per person and extended the state’s next hunting season, but they also set new restrictions in areas adjacent to Yellowstone National Park.
The U.S. Forest Service released a new report on managing wildfire danger on the “wildland-urban” interface, a subject of special interest on the North Fork . . .
Earlier this year, U.S. Forest Service researchers found that roughly 90 percent of fuel reduction treatments on national forests were effective in reducing the intensity of wildfire while also allowing for better wildfire control.
The report, “Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and Preparing for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface,” synthesizes the latest research and provides examples of what communities in the wildland-urban interface can do to reduce their risk by becoming “fire adapted.”
As expected, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has approved the “South Fork of Coal Creek Habitat Enhancement Project” . . .
State fisheries managers approved increased spawning of westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout and habitat improvements on the South Fork of Coal Creek in Flathead County.
For those of you who haven’t heard, Trail Creek Road is closed through Friday, July 12, this week. It will be open over the weekend and then closed again Monday and Tuesday, July 15 &16. The U.S. Forest Service is fixing a retaining wall near mile 5 that is starting to lean.
The North Fork Preservation Association’s annual meeting will be held on, Saturday, July 27 at Sondreson Hall.
Events kick off with a potluck at 5:00 p.m. The NFPA will supply burgers and sausages. Bring anything else that might be tasty. (Note that the webmaster is fond of rhubarb pie. Just saying.)
The business meeting is at 7:00 p.m. — or a bit earlier if everyone is done eating.
The main program begins at 7:30 p.m. with a talk by Rick Mace, biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and a North Fork landowner. He will give a presentation titled “What We Are Learning About Grizzlies from Catching Them in the North and South Fork”.
This summer’s Interlocal meeting is coming up on Wednesday, July 10, at Sondreson Hall. The meeting starts at 1:00 p.m. and is sponsored by the North Fork Compact. Interlocal meetings are held twice each year, winter and summer. These semi-annual get-togethers are intended to encourage open discussion between North Fork landowners and neighbors and local, state and federal agencies.
In other words, it’s a big deal if you have an interest in the North Fork.
Preceeding the Interlocal meeting, is the annual FireWise Day Workshop at 9:30 a.m. and lunch at noon.
Well, now. The Daily Inter Lake posted coverage, with photos, of the Polebridge Fourth of July parade almost before the last pulled pork sandwich was consumed. They couldn’t quite get a handle on the idea that there are no parade organizers and they listed Larry Wilson as “part of the North Fork Preservation Association” (cough, cough), but it was a nice article . . .
[July 5 update: The Hungry Horse News also got into the act and posted a fairly extensive photo gallery from the parade. There are many familiar faces]
The Fourth of July means many things to many people, but one recurring theme is freedom.
Freedom from Great Britain, freedom from tyranny, and, in Polebridge, freedom from order.
The tiny community 35 miles north of Columbia Falls has held a small parade for several decades on Independence Day, and the requirements for getting in are quite strict.
“It’s not planned,” said parade marshal and 34-year Polebridge resident Rob Fisher. “If you want to be in it, you just show up at high noon.”
There’s a big informational presentation on fire mitigation coming up July 10, sponsored by the North Fork Landowners Association.
Larry Wilson turned over his monthly column to Molly Shepherd to announce the meeting and provide background . . .
On July 10, the North Fork Landowners Association will host the biggest educational/informative meeting of the year. From 9:30 a.m. to noon, there will be an educational program on wildfire.
When I asked Molly Shepherd, chairperson of the Fire Mitigation Committee, for information, she wrote an excellent report and it follows as she wrote it. Thanks Molly.
Ten years ago, on July 18, 2003, a lightning strike in the Whitefish Range ignited the Wedge Canyon Fire. Before the fire finally died out in the fall, it had destroyed seven homes and 29 outbuildings between Whale Creek and Trail Creek. A total of 54,400 acres burned. The costs of fighting the fire and protecting structures exceeded $50 million.
The Wedge Canyon Fire was only one of many large wildfires that have burned across the North Fork Valley. Indeed, fire has been second only to glaciation in shaping the valley’s landscape. But because of its cost, destructiveness and duration, Wedge Canyon served as a catalyst for change. The North Fork Landowners Association appointed a diverse committee to explore what might be done to mitigate the effects of future wildfires.
Members of the Fire Mitigation Committee reached several understandings based on the North Fork’s fire history and the probability of future fires. One was that it’s safer, cheaper and more effective to abate hazards before a fire starts. Another was that although landowners have neither the ability nor the desire to eliminate fire from the valley, we can and should ameliorate the risks that it poses to our homes and the costs associated with defending them.
Since the time of the Wedge Canyon Fire, the committee has obtained three grants from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to help North Fork landowners reduce hazardous fuels on their properties. Response to the voluntary cost-sharing program has been remarkable.
The first two grants resulted in more than 100 home wildfire inspections with treatment prescriptions. Fuels reduction work was completed under about 100 separate cost agreements. At least 500 acres of private property were treated with grant money. Probably even more acres were treated without any financial assistance. Projects funded by the third grant are underway, several of which seek to protect multiple homes and to afford safe ingress and egress for landowners and firefighters.
Private fuel treatments are just part of the story, however. Only about 14,500 acres — less than three per cent of the total acreage in the North Fork Valley — are in private hands. Given this reality, the Fire Mitigation Committee decided that landowners needed to collaborate with federal and state agencies to reduce risk.
The agencies were receptive. Our shared premise has been that public and private efforts should complement one another, with homes being the focal point. Both the Forest Service and the DNRC have planned and implemented major fuels reduction projects in consultation with the committee and other landowners. It’s been a model of public and private partnership, leveraging the effectiveness of one another’s efforts.
This month, the Fire Mitigation Committee will sponsor a workshop marking the 10th anniversary of the Wedge Canyon Fire. We’ll look back to conditions at the time of the fire, assess what’s changed in the intervening 10 years, and consider the potential effects of the changes on future fires. The event will serve as our annual Firewise Day.
Presenters will include Wally Bennett, who was one of the Type 1 incident commanders during the Wedge Fire. He’ll share his perspectives on the fire and on how subsequent fuels reduction projects might affect future fire behavior and suppression efforts.
In addition, committee member Allen Chrisman will examine North Fork fire history and climate change; Michael Dardis will discuss fuels projects undertaken by the Forest Service since the time of the Wedge Canyon Fire; Brian Manning will do the same on behalf of the DNRC; and Angela Mallon and Bill Swope will review what’s been accomplished with the help of grants and touch upon some ongoing concerns, among them ingress and egress.
The North Fork Firewise Day workshop will be held on Wednesday, July 10, from 9:30 a.m. to noon in Sondreson Community Hall. The Firewise morning will be followed in the afternoon by the semi-annual Interlocal Meeting, where county, state and federal agencies will report on their North Fork activities. We hope to see you then.
Here’s more information on that recent story about a motorcycle-chasing wolf . . .
Every once in a while, a news story comes a long that screams for attention.
An espionage case. A human-rights violation. A political scandal. A wolf chasing a motorcycle?
Believe it or not, the latter held its own among certain crowds recently.
The incident occurred June 8 when Tim Bartlett of Banff, Alberta, took his new Yamaha for a spin along Highway 93 in Canada’s Kootenay National Park.
A group of senators representing states in the Western U.S. are not happy with cuts to wildfire prevention funds . . .
A bipartisan group of Western U.S. senators on Friday urged the Obama administration to focus more on preventing wildfires rather than taking money from programs that clear potentially hazardous dead trees and brush to fund efforts to fight the increasingly destructive blazes.
The administration is proposing a 31 percent cut in funding for the government’s central fire prevention program one year after record blazes burned 9.3 million acres. The federal government routinely spends so much money fighting wildfires that it uses money meant to be spent on clearing potential fuels like dead trees and underbrush in national forests.