From the Monday, June 2, 2008 online edition of the Missoulian . . .

A Canadian coal company hoping to open a massive mine north of Glacier National Park has encountered a powerful new critic – Sen. Barack Obama.

Obama, who was back under the Big Sky campaigning for president on Friday, has joined Montana’s bipartisan congressional delegation in opposition to the mining proposal, “and that’s important, because whoever becomes our next president will have a direct role to play, in terms of presenting this issue in an international forum.”

So said Will Hammerquist, the local representative for the National Parks Conservation Association.

About a month ago, Hammerquist met with Obama during a campaign stop in Missoula. He had the senator’s attention for only a couple minutes, he said, but it was “just enough time to brief him on the issue.”

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From the Tuesday, June 3, 2008 online edition of canada.com . . .

A long-simmering sore point in Canada-U.S. relations – a proposed open-pit coal mine in a pristine B.C. valley – is irritating Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who wants to be the next U.S. president.

“Barack Obama supports efforts by Senator Max Baucus and Senator Jon Tester as well as Gov. Brian Schweitzer to stop the Cline mine,” Obama campaign official Matt Chandler wrote last week in an e-mail to Will Hammerquist of the U.S. National Parks Conservation Association.

“The Flathead River and Glacier National Park are treasures that should be conserved for future generations.”

Environmentalists say the mine could pollute the north fork of the Flathead River, which flows from B.C. into Montana and forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park.

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From the Wednesday, June 4, 2008 online edition of the Globe & Mail . . .

Several leading environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada have written to the United Nations asking that proposed energy developments along British Columbia’s Flathead River be investigated as threats to a World Heritage Site.

In a letter sent yesterday, the organizations state that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which links globally significant national parks in Alberta and Montana, be placed on the UN’s World Heritage in Danger list.

“There is substantial danger that the existing statutory and regulatory framework will fail to adequately protect Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and its surrounding lands from adverse impacts caused by mining and CBM [coal bed methane] development in the headwaters of the Flathead River,” the groups state in a letter to Francesco Bandarin, director of the UN’s World Heritage Centre.

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From the Thursday, May 1, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .

The life of a grizzly bear outside of Glacier National Park or the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex is a decidedly risky proposition.

The number of bears killed inside Glacier by humans since 1999 was just one — and it was an old bear that may have died as a result of a capture for research. In the Bob, where there are few people and no roads, the number was zero.

Inside the Park, folks don’t tote guns and garbage, as well as vehicle traffic, is more closely controlled.

Outside the Park grizzlies run into people with guns and cars and trains and garbage cans full of good eats, and the prospects of survival grow more dim.

In 2007 there were 25 recorded grizzlies killed by humans, grizzly bear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, and that number may actually be as high as 30 — there are five other bears that were found dead, but the cause of their death hasn’t been determined. Servheen released his findings last Thursday during a multi-agency meeting of bear biologists and managers in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

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From the Thursday, March 27, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .

The Flathead Basin Commission has asked Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester to find a way to compensate and retire all pending oil and gas leases in the Flathead National Forest.

The Commission passed the resolution late last month.

Both senators said they support such a measure.

And while Forest Service officials here have said there hasn’t been much, if any, interest in completing an environmental impact statement (EIS) on oil and gas leases, the Commission would still like to see the matter put to bed.

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From the Thursday, March 20, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .

The North Fork of the Flathead is blanketed by oil and gas leases and they’re not in Canada — they’re right here in Montana, just north of Columbia Falls on Flathead National Forest lands.

The leases date back to the 1970s and have been held in what amounts to legal limbo since 1985, when James R. Conner of Kalispell, members of the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Madison-Gallatin Alliance sued Robert Burford, director of the Bureau of Land Management.

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Freelance writer Gordon Sullivan wrote an excellent article on the current resource extraction threats to the Transboundary Flathead. It appeared in the Thursday, February 28, 2008 online edition of the Missoula Independent . . .

The three branches of the Flathead River thread like brilliant ribbons through Montana’s rugged northwestern mountains as they make their way to Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake in western America. The Flathead system constitutes some of Montana’s purest water, with approximately 80 percent of its total originating from untouched, federally protected lands. The main stem of the river stretches from above Columbia Falls to the northern shore of the lake. Two of the river’s branches, the South Fork and the Middle Fork, begin in the rugged backcountry of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Lodgepole Creek as it runs downstream near the proposed site of a massive coal mine in Canada, just north of the Montana border.

The third and most pristine offshoot, the North Fork, starts as a trickle some 40 miles north of the Montana border, in what today remains an unpopulated and remote drainage, a part of the same spectacular mountain range that extends to Waterton Lake and Glacier National Parks. It’s a corner of the world that has everything going for it — a blessing that’s also a curse. Grizzly bears and bull trout call it home. Nature lovers, tourists, environmentalists, and wilderness enthusiasts call it paradise. And energy companies love it, too.

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