From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has closed wolf hunting in a district covering areas east of Kalispell and in the Swan Valley because the allotted quota was recently met.
The quota for District 130 was 12 wolves, and over the weekend the state announced that the quota had been met and the district would be closed as of sunset Monday…
The Montana wolf hunt is scheduled to continue through Dec. 31. A proposal to extend it one more month is under consideration.
From today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
Wildlife officials are closing down the gray wolf season in portions of western Montana where hunters have met the state’s annual quota.
Officials said hunting in Wolf Management Unit 130 was to end a half-hour after sunset on Monday because the area’s 12-wolf quota has been filled. That includes portions of Flathead, Lake and Missoula counties.
No one who has spent much time on the North Fork will be surprised by the material discussed in this Associated Press article about grizzly bear encounters by inexperienced hikers.
However, there is a startling statement near the end that makes the whole article worth reading . . .
Officials recommend hikers carry bear spray, not run from grizzlies, and not hike alone.
Meanwhile, a representative of the British Columbia Ministry of Environment said a new study there found more evidence of Canadian black bears making predatory attacks on humans.
“We’re used to defensive attacks by grizzly bears, that are usually triggered by protecting cubs or food or space,” said Tony Hamilton. “But now we’re seeing black bears that have typically had no previous human contact looking at us as potential prey…
From today’s Missoulian . . .
Hunters across Montana had killed less than half the quota of wolves set by state biologists as of Sunday, the end of rifle season for deer and elk.
The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had recorded that hunters had shot 99 wolves by Sunday across 14 management units. The quota was reached in only one wolf district, the large unit that stretches from just east of Butte to the North Dakota state line.
Here’s a pretty good discussion of the impacts on Montana’s forests over the next 50 years or so. Interestingly, some of the changes may actually restore earlier, healthier conditions . . .
Three things will combine to radically transform Montana forests in the next 50 years: bugs, fire and politics.
Mountain pine beetles have killed millions of acres of lodgepole pine trees. Those dead stands, combined with a progressively drier climate, will likely burn in wilder, more intense fashion. The biological aftermath should bring a wider mix of tree species, open areas and wildlife habitat, according to new computer models.
How humans tinker with that progression remains a wildcard…
Invasive lake trout continue to cause problems for native bull trout . . .
An annual stream survey of native bull trout in the Swan River drainage revealed a continued decline in reproduction, while the number of spawning trout in the North Fork Flathead Basin also fell below average.
Montana’s big game season will end as scheduled, but the wolf hunt will continue. So far, hunters have taken only 96 of the allowed 220 wolves.
Here’s the lead-in from an AP article discussing this . . .
Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say Montana’s 2011 general big game hunting season will end Sunday evening, as planned, while wolf hunting will continue at least through the end of the year.
An interesting article from today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
A rash of grizzly bear incidents in Northwest Montana has led to one of the busiest years ever involving captures and relocations, according to Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
FWP has made 43 grizzly bear captures in Region 1 because of problem incidents this year, one of the highest numbers ever, according to FWP.
“This valley is a real grizzly hot spot,” FWP spokesperson John Fraley said.
Six grizzlies have had to be euthanized in recent months and one has been transferred to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone following problems, Fraley said.
Fraley attributes the increase in numbers to the fact that the grizzly population has recovered in the Northern Rockies in recent years, with an estimated 1,000 bears living in the region.
From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Heading into the final week of the big game hunting season, the deer and elk harvest picked up but still lags behind last year’s numbers while the wolf harvest is approaching quotas for a few Northwest Montana hunting districts.
Northwest Montana has six wolf hunting districts with a combined hunting quota of 71 wolves.
For District 101 covering the area between Libby and Kalispell, hunters have taken down 15 wolves out of a quota of 19 for the district.
In District 130 covering the area east of Kalispell including the Swan Valley, nine wolves have been harvested; the quota is 12.
And in the North Fork’s District 110, one wolf has been harvested out of the quota of two.
British Columbia has now passed formal legislation protecting the Canadian Flathead (and the folks downstream on the U.S. side of the border) from extractive resource development. This is big news. (Albeit slightly stale — your friendly webperson got a little buried by his day job.) The Missoulian has a good write-up . . .
Canadian legislation to protect the Flathead River Basin from mining and energy development has formally passed the British Columbia Parliament.
The Flathead Watershed Area Conservation Act received royal assent on Monday evening. The bill cements the Canadian half of an agreement between British Columbia and Montana to maintain the wild and scenic character of the Flathead River, the north fork of which forms the western border of Glacier National Park.
“A healthy and free-flowing Flathead river is good for people and wildlife on both sides of the border,” said Dr. Richard Jeo, a biologist and director for The Nature Conservancy’s Canada Program. “This binational effort gives hope to communities whose economies rely on the river and to iconic wildlife that represent the spirit of the West.”