Lots of (ahem) howling about wolves in this year’s session of the Montana legislature . . .
As the Montana Legislature moves into the second half of the session the gray wolf is proving to be one creature with few friends in the Capitol.
Lawmakers are advancing a slate of bills that call for decreasing protections for wolves, while Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer encouraged killing the animals last month in defiance of the federal Endangered Species Act.
From this week’s Hungry Horse News . . .
Hunters just might be able to use a spear next season if a law that makes them legal holds up. The Senate passed a bill by a 27-21 vote in January that would make a spear a legal weapon.
Senate Bill 112, sponsored by Sanders County Republican Greg Hinkle, is now being considered by the House. It’s just one of the many fish and game laws that are under consideration by the Legislature this year.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer has openly made fun of the bill and has promised he’ll veto it.
But spear chucking isn’t the only thing in lawmakers sights. They’d also like to nullify the Endangered Species Act. . .
From today’s Missoulian . . .
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has inserted language into the Senate’s Continuing Resolution – the bill that funds the entire national budget – declaring the gray wolf a recovered species in Montana and Idaho.
The $1.077 trillion, seven-month spending bill is expected to reach a full Senate vote on Tuesday, and then return to the House of Representatives.
A bit of a kerfuffle over a policy change at the U.S. Department of the Interior . . .
Republican governors and members of Congress vowed Tuesday to fight an Obama administration plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection.
This well-written, well-researched article by Rob Chaney of the Missoulian is recommended reading for anyone interested in the challenges still to come in protecting the Trans-boundary Flathead . . .
Now that the trans-boundary conference calls and Washington, D.C., hand-shaking sessions are over, a lot remains to finish in protecting the Flathead River between British Columbia and Montana.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s Valentine’s Day announcement that two conservation groups were providing $9.4 million to buy out mining claims on the Canadian side of the Flathead didn’t include all the details of the deal. One significant omission was that while the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy is raising its half of the money through private donations, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is dipping into a $225 million Canadian government fund for its contribution.
A very informative article posted late last night to the Missoulian’s web site . . .
While about 80 percent of existing energy exploration leases in the North Fork Flathead have been retired by the world’s leading oil, gas and mining companies, a handful of parcels remain in contention by smaller firms.
Those holdings include nearly 138,000 acres in Flathead County that extend into the Haskill Basin drainage, the primary source of Whitefish’s drinking water supply, as well as along the western edge of Glacier National Park in the Flathead National Forest and underneath Big Mountain.
This week’s Hungry Horse News column by Larry Wilson discusses the recent actions on both sides of the border to protect the North Fork watershed and takes a look at what might be coming next. His column is, as usual, recommended reading . . .
Since Gov. Brian Schweitzer signed a memorandum of understanding with British Columbia, which promised up to 17 million dollars to Canadian companies for reimbursement for cash already spent, we have all wondered where he would find the money. Montana could not pay and for months efforts were made, without success, to get Uncle Sam to foot the bill.
Now it seems that an answer has been found! The Nature Conservancy of Canada and the U.S. Nature Conservancy have committed $9.4 million to the government of British Columbia to conclude the British Columbia-Montana memo of understanding signed a year ago. As part of the deal, the province of British Columbia will enact legislation banning the extraction of minerals, oil, gas, and coal within the watershed. With the two nature conservancy groups coming up with this money, protection of the upper North Fork is an important step towards completion.
This article on the Sierra Club BC’s web site does a good job of putting the current actions by the B.C. government to protect the Canadian part of the Flathead valley in context.
Here’s the lead-in . . .
Legislation to prohibit mining and energy development in the Flathead River Valley is only the first of three steps the B.C. government must take to protect the Flathead permanently, said Sierra Club BC in a recent press release.
On February 15, 2011, the B.C. premier’s office issued a statement that “the Province has signed an agreement to sustain environmental values in the Flathead Valley, and will introduce legislation to support the 2010 MOU on Environmental Protection, Climate Action and Energy with the State of Montana.”
“While the legislation is an important step, it does not equate to long-term conservation for the Flathead River Valley,” said Sierra Club BC spokesperson Sarah Cox. “It’s a complete stretch to say that the Flathead is forever protected.”
Sally Mauk, news director at KUFM, Montana Public Radio, runs a twice-monthly column in the Missoulian. Her most recent discusses the world-wide spread of rainbow trout from its native home on the Pacific Rim. I’ve tossed it in here because it is pretty interesting and because there’s a North Fork connection.
Here’s an excerpt from the North Fork reference . . .
And then there’s the Frankenstein effect. All this mucking with nature has created fish hybrids, especially in waters where rainbow and westslope cutthroat trout have interbred. Halverson was fishing once in the North Fork of the Flathead, where it’s catch-and-release only for westslope cutthroat, when he caught a trout that was so hybridized, he was stumped.
The Daily Inter Lake has nice things to say today about the recently concluded deal to protect the Flathead drainage . . .
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the recently announced commitment of the Nature Conservancy to provide about $9.4 million to seal a deal between Montana and British Columbia that will prevent mining in the Canadian headwaters of the Flathead River Basin.
It’s even harder to overstate what a sweet deal it is. Montana businesses, conservation groups and political leaders have been battling mining proposals in the British Columbia Flathead drainage for the last 30 years, never really knowing when the next battle would come.
Now, because of a memorandum of understanding between the province and the state that was announced a year ago, there is a prohibition on mining in the remote and pristine drainage that feeds Montana’s North Fork Flathead River.