Category Archives: Environmental Issues

U.S. Customs and Border Protection asks for input on Northern Border environmental study

Environmental Issues,

Customs and Border Protection has completed a draft “programmatic environmental impact statement” on the effects of its entire operation along the U.S. northern border. This would, of course, include the North Fork.

I am not making this up.

Anyways, the “Northern Border PEIS” is in its 45-day public comment period. There is even a dedicated web site where the public can find information about the study and leave comments. The web site includes the full text of the study, as well as supporting materials and a schedule of public meetings.

A hat-tip to Richard Wackrow for pointing out this fine example of government-sponsored surrealism.

Related links:

Press release announcing the comment period for the Northern Border PEIS

Northern Border PEIS web site

The devil’s in the details: Resolving state mineral rights in the North Fork Flathead Valley

Commentary, Environmental Issues, ,

From the most recent Headwaters Montana newsletter . . .

When Gov. Schweitzer and BC Premier Gordon Campbell signed the historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the North Fork Flathead River in February 2010 Headwaters Montana heralded that event as an “historic breakthrough”.  And indeed it was.  But like all signed agreements, the MOU was only a beginning.

Unless fulfilled (i.e. made concrete with legislation and other actions) the MOU and the protections it promised could be lost for another generation to fight…

Continue reading . . .

A grizzly takes a serious swim

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

There’s no explicit North Fork connection, here, but North Forkers tend to be grizzly aficionados and this is a good griz story . . .

Could it be webbed claws? Or maybe an ancient connection to a Labrador bloodline?

In any case, a young grizzly bear has demonstrated Olympian swimming skills on Flathead Lake, proved with GPS data from a satellite collar that was recovered Monday near the town of Swan Lake…

Mace calculated that the bear traveled 1,200 miles on land and water while she was wearing the collar from June 2010 to September 2011…

Continue reading . . .

Time to fill out Waterton Park

Commentary, Environmental Issues, ,

Edwin Fields of Headwaters Montana has a significant op-ed in this week’s Hungry Horse News that is of particular interest to North Fork residents . . .

It’s late summer in Montana and thousands of locals and visitors from around the world have streamed into Glacier National Park every day. Make that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. It’s an important distinction that illustrates just how special this place is.

Glacier Park is the U.S. side of the Peace Park. Waterton Lakes is on the Canadian side. But in 1932, the local Rotary Clubs of Kalispell and Cardston, Alberta, thought it would be a good idea to give the world its first International Peace Park. And after a lot of good-hearted work, they succeeded…

…Yet the case must again be made that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is not yet complete. Just look at a map…

Continue reading . . .

Rise in bear-related chicken raids ruffling feathers of wildlife managers

Environmental Issues, News, , , , , ,

This very interesting, if lengthy, article is not nearly as silly as it sounds. Turns out the rising interest in hobby farming is triggering some pretty serious bear conflicts. Bears like chicken and sweet corn just as much as humans do.

There are some great quotes here from a collection of highly irritated wildlife managers.

From today’s Missoulian . . .

More grizzly bears are keying in on unprotected chicken coops in western Montana, with increasingly deadly consequences – both for the bears and the pilfered poultry.

The rise in bear-related chicken raids is ruffling the feathers of state and federal wildlife managers who are forced to move or kill bears that receive a food reward, be it from a trash can, a fruit orchard or a bird pen. The conflicts are entirely avoidable, managers say, but it’s the responsibility of landowners to buck the disturbing trend…

“I sometimes get calls daily on chickens, whereas I used to never hear about it,” said Jamie Jonkel, FWP’s bear management specialist in Missoula. “Chickens are the new garbage. There are so many chickens on the landscape that it’s like having garbage cans with wings just tempting the bears.”

Continue reading . . .

Lake trout removal tactics paying off

Environmental Issues, News, ,

The Daily Inter Lake has a pretty interesting report on the progress being made to remove invasive lake trout from Quartz Lake in Glacier National Park . . .

It’s been rough and wearying work plying the waters of Glacier National Park’s remote Quartz Lake for unwanted lake trout, but the effort appears promising so far.

Since the experimental suppression project got under way in 2009, more than 1,500 non-native lake trout have been removed from the lake through spring and fall gill netting.

“All the signs are indicating that we are making a dent up there for sure,” said Clint Muhlfeld, an aquatic research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “We saw a pretty dramatic decline over the course of the spring sampling.”

Continue reading . . .

‘If Glacier leaves you speechless, speak up’ – ProtectGlacier.com launched

Environmental Issues, News, , , , , ,

Many of you already got an email from the National Parks Conservation Association announcing the opening of the “Protect Glacier” website. For those who haven’t seen the big announcement yet, here it is:

More than 30 years ago, fans of Glacier National Park were alarmed to learn of Canadian coal mining plans that would tear down entire mountains along the park’s northwestern border.

Today, after decades of international negotiation and diplomacy, those plans finally have been scuttled, with Canada pledging to protect the park’s world-class waterways from upstream mining.  Today the United States is working to do the same.

Even as major energy companies (including Chevron, BP, Exxon and ConocoPhillips) volunteer to retire their mining and drilling leases on Glacier’s western fringe, lawmakers struggle to pass protective measures prohibiting future mining of public lands in the North Fork Flathead River drainage.

That’s why a coalition of concerned citizens and Glacier Park lovers  — with help from the National Parks Conservation Association — has brought this historic issue into the dot.com future, with a website and clearing house dedicated to resolving land-use conflicts in the transboundary Flathead.

ProtectGlacier.com went live this week, a virtual world where visitors can explore maps and photographs from the Flathead, can learn about what’s at stake and flipthrough years of reports and research. They can read the latest park news, Tweet and re-Tweet and link to Facebook, and they can listen to what people are saying about the North Fork Watershed Protection Act.  That legislation (S.233) has been introduced by Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, and would withdraw public lands adjacent to the park from future drilling – just as the Canadians have done on their side of the border.

Online visitors to the site can sign a ProtectGlacier.com letter of support of the legislation, adding their voices to the thousands who already have spoken up on behalf of America’s finest alpine park.

This Website represents the future – our future, Glacier Park’s future – but it’s also just the latest chapter in a very old story, a story that Glacier’s advocates have been helping to write for decades. This is, in fact, how history gets written. So pick up that keyboard, and be sure to add a few lines of your own at ProtectGlacier.com.

Further reading: The National Parks Traveler website also has a good article about the ProtectGlacier.com site.

Larry Wilson: Fewer bear problems this summer

Commentary, Environmental Issues, News, , , ,

In this week’s column, Larry talks about the encouraging drop in bear-human conflicts this summer. . . .

I’m a little bit surprised that there have been so few grizzly bear problems this summer.

On Trail Creek, the huckleberry crop has been less than bountiful in the lower elevations, and this usually translates to more bear problems.

The two three-year-old sows that have been seen quite often have not caused any problems, and the big boar on Trail Creek has also been seen but, so far, has not been a problem.

I think there are several reasons for this, but the biggest is the fact that North Fork humans have become excellent guests in grizzly habitat.

Continue reading at the Hungry Horse News . . .

Montana’s wolf hunt opens this Saturday

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Idaho started their wolf hunt the other day, now it’s Montana’s turn. From the Daily Inter Lake . . .

Wolves will be legal game when archery season opens Saturday, but successful hunts are expected to be very rare…

Montana has set a statewide quota for 220 wolves to be harvested this year during the archery season, the early rifle season in wilderness areas and the general big game season that opens in late October…

Continue reading . . .