Category Archives: Environmental Issues

Regional bird count reflects climate change

Environmental Issues, News,

Pacific Loon

The Daily Inter Lake posted a pretty thorough article on the regional annual bird count. Our own Steve Gniadek gets a mention . . .

Rare visitors to Montana, a pair of Pacific loons bobbed along in the gentle swells of Flathead Lake on a chilly morning Dec. 19.

About 1,000 feet from the shore, the vivid black-and-white stripes along the birds’ backs and necks would appear momentarily in Craig Hohenberger’s spotting scope, then vanish behind another wave.

“They’re more of a fall bird,” Hohenberger, a retired ornithologist, explained, automatically adding “golden-crowned kinglet” as he picked up the barely audible call from an unseen bird. “It’s normally around October you might see them.”

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Montana governor allows bison to roam outside Yellowstone

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Close up of bison grazing

Well, the guy’s last name is “Bullock” after all . . .

Wild bison will be allowed to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park and stay in parts of Montana year-round under a Tuesday move by Gov. Steve Bullock that breaks a longstanding impasse in a wildlife conflict that’s dragged on for decades.

The Democratic governor’s decision likely won’t end the periodic slaughters of some bison that roam outside Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. But it for the first time allows hundreds of the animals to linger year-round on an estimated 400 square miles north and west of the park.

The move has been eagerly sought by wildlife advocates — and steadfastly opposed by livestock interests. Ranchers around Yellowstone are wary of a disease carried by many bison and the increased competition the animals pose for limited grazing space.

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Kootenai Forest stakeholder group reaches accord

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Southern Cabinet Mountains, as seen from Swede Mountain, near Libby

This is a decent summary of the status of the Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Coalition, including a discussion of a couple of rather contentious lawsuits stirring the pot over there . . .

A collaborative group representing stakeholders in and around the Kootenai National Forest announced an agreement last week that will guide its input on proposed land management projects.

The Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Coalition includes representatives from environmental, industry and recreation groups that often are at odds on forest policy. Robyn King, executive director of the Yaak Valley Forest Council, said the group was formed in 2006 to come up with a set of shared objectives to minimize litigation blamed for slowing down projects in the national forest.

“This is the guiding document that we would use, as a group, to make our comments to the U.S. Forest Service,” King said. “This is an organic document, so as we get out on the ground and see different applications being proposed by the U.S. Forest Service, we may make changes over time.”

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North American ecosystem shift 6,000 years ago caused by humans

Environmental Issues, Science, , ,

Terraced Farming

I’m not sure if the study referenced in this review has a solid statistical basis or not, but the findings certainly are fascinating. Researchers claim to have found evidence for an abrupt ecosystem shift in North America (!) triggered by the arrival of humans dependent on agriculture . . .

For the past 6,000 years, human beings have been having an extreme effect on the distribution of animals and plants across the globe, some of which had been in place for up to 300 million years, to the point that some species are more segregated from others than they have ever been. A research team from the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems (ETE) program, led by S. Kathleen Lyons, performed a study that looked deeper into plants’ and animals’ distribution across the landscapes of the planet through fossil records.

The shift has been so dramatic that the team discovered that the consequences of a shift like this could usher in a new stage in global evolution equivalent to that of the evolution of complex organisms from single-cell microbes, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

The team decided to focus on locating patterns among plants and animals, filtering out the relationships that could be classified merely as chance. They looked at two types of relationships – pairs and segregations – to find these patterns. Pairs would include animals that occur together, like cheetahs and giraffes, which are often found in the same areas, while segregations would include animals that are not present when another is.

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LWCF makes it into spending bill; ‘fire-borrowing’ does not

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Reauthorization for the Land and Water Conservation Fund made it into the pending omnibus spending bill, but the ‘fire-borrowing’ fix for funding large wildfires did not. The wildfire measure was tied to a set of logging measures that raised opposition on both sides of the aisle . . .

Proposals to speed up logging projects apparently killed chances for fixing the U.S. Forest Service’s “fire borrowing” problem as Congress moved an omnibus budget bill toward passage Wednesday.

The 2,009-page bill does include re-authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was a bipartisan goal of Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. But the Montana delegation’s push for categorical exemptions and expedited approvals of logging projects ran into opposition from both national environmental groups and Senate Republican leadership.

Both Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., opposed including the Forest Wildfire Funding and Forest Management amendment that was backed by a large coalition of logging, recreation and conservation groups as well as members of Congress from both parties and the Agriculture Department.

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Climate impacts to hunting, fishing and wildlife heritage

Environmental Issues, News, , , ,

Over at the Flathead Beacon, Tristan Scott posted an article on a recently released report by the National Wildlife Federation . . .

Montana’s hunters and anglers have as much vested in the Paris climate negotiations as the state’s abundant suite of wildlife, according to research compiled by the National Wildlife Federation, which recently released a report detailing what’s at stake culturally, ecologically and economically if a solution is not forthcoming.

As 150 world leaders at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference hash out a binding agreement for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, scientists studying moose, cutthroat trout, mountain goats, and other wild animals in Montana are sounding the alarm about climate impacts in the Treasure State.

The National Wildlife Federation’s report is entitled “Game Changers: Climate Impacts to America’s Hunting, Fishing and Wildlife Heritage,” and outlines the historic role of hunters and anglers in conservation and the many ways in which the changing climate is affecting hunting and fishing opportunities and the state’s robust outdoor economy.

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Feds aim to maintain current Greater Yellowstone grizzly numbers

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Grizzly bear sow with three cubs

Federal wildlife managers edge closer to delisting the grizzly bear . . .

Wildlife managers will seek to maintain grizzly bear numbers in the three-state Yellowstone region near current levels as they move toward lifting protections for the threatened species, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The agency has set a management goal of 674 grizzly bears across the 19,300-square-mile region. That’s enough of the animals to “ensure a sustainable and resilient population,” spokeswoman Serena Baker said.

The population target is consistent with the average number of bears between 2002 and 2014. But it’s about 6 percent below the most recent tally of 714 bears at the end of 2014.

Read more . . .

Also read: Grizzly counting methods face scrutiny as delisting decision nears

Bear-proof storage getting better; still room for improvement

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Cinca, May 5, 2015 by W K Walker

Here’s an update on the current state of bear-proof storage. I particularly like the bit about “Kobuk the Destroyer” . . .

An unexpected problem has developed in the world of bear-resistant food storage testing: The grizzly bears responsible for tearing containers to shreds are getting bored or depressed.

“With some of these containers, the bears are no longer interested in testing,” U.S. Forest Service national carnivore program leader Scott Jackson told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee meeting in Missoula on Tuesday. “For the metal cases that are bolted to the ground that they can’t tip over and knock around, that’s becoming more and more of a problem. They just lick the bait off the outside and leave them alone. The manufacturers are kind of left in limbo.”

In a way, that’s a good problem to have. Bear-resistant food storage rules apply to more and more places in the woods as both grizzlies and black bears add human food to their foraging plans. Next summer, floaters who win a coveted permit to spend a week on Montana’s Smith River must pack their steaks and beer in bear-resistant containers.

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Grizzlies keep pushing out onto high plains

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Grizzly bear sow with three cubs

Grizzlies continue to move down from the mountains and out into their old range on the high plans . . .

As the lone grizzly bear expert for the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Region Four office, Mike Madel hasn’t had any problems keeping busy along the Rocky Mountain Front. “It was a heck of a year,” he said during a presentation to regional grizzly experts Wednesday near Kalispell. “We had bears expanding way out into the plains again, and further than we’ve ever had them.”…

The range of grizzly bears along Montana’s Northern Continental Divide has roughly doubled since they received federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, and much of that new territory has been east of the Rockies.

Grizzlies are increasingly present on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, often following the winding, tree-lined drainages that extend east from the mountains. Even Great Falls might not be immune to the encroaching bears for long.

Read more . . .

Also read: State, federal grizzly bear experts to meet in Missoula