Category Archives: Environmental Issues

Montana FWP: Feds getting ready to delist grizzlies

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

More press about removing grizzlies from the endangered species list in the Northern Rockies . . .

The head of Montana’s wildlife agency said Thursday federal officials will seek to lift federal protections from some threatened grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies in the next two years.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks director Jeff Hagener told lawmakers he expects the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to propose rules that could remove two populations of grizzlies from the Endangered Species list.

One rule could lift protections for bears in and around Yellowstone Park in 2015, Hagener said. The other rule ending protections would be for grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide region by 2016, he said.

Read more . . .

Frank Vitale: Political shenanigans continue with North Fork bills

Commentary, Environmental Issues,

Frank Vitale is understandably annoyed with the political posturing holding up the North Fork Watershed Protection Act. This op-ed appeared May 14 on the Hungry Horse News website and has been submitted to a number of other regional newspapers . . .

My affiliation with the North Fork spans 35 years. As a North Fork landowner, I’ve worked, hunted, fished and cleared many miles of trails. For me, keeping the North Fork pristine is personal.

That’s why I’m so disappointed by the recent decision by Republicans in Congress to block a bipartisan bill to protect the North Fork.

Montanans have read conflicting information about how we reached this impasse (see Mac Minard’s April 19 op-ed in the Daily Inter Lake). I want to set the record straight.

Congressman Steve Daines recently told U.S. News that his strategy to win the Senate race this year is to pick off and neutralize constituents like advocates for the North Fork. His recent actions show why he can’t be trusted.

Sens. John Walsh and Jon Tester are pushing a bill, originally introduced in 2010, to withdraw the U.S. watershed from future development, following through on a deal between Montana and British Columbia to permanently protect the North Fork.

Montanans were hopeful when Congressman Daines introduced a companion bill last year, marking the first time in 30 years that the whole delegation supported a public lands bill. Our hopes rose further when on March 4 the House of Representatives passed the bill.

Unfortunately the North Fork has now run into the Tea Party gauntlet in the Senate. What is clear is that the game was rigged.

On April 3, three Republican Senators from other states — Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Texas — blocked our senators’ attempt to pass this made-in-Montana bill in the Senate. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, recently donated $10,000 to Congressman Daines’ campaign.

As Congressman Daines knows, the vote in the Senate (by “unanimous consent”) was the Senate’s equivalent of how the House passed the bill. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, “Most noncontroversial measures are approved by ‘suspension of the rules’ in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate.”

In fact, all eight Senate public lands bills that have passed the chamber this Congress passed by unanimous consent. Those bills set aside 85,000 acres of new wilderness and 73 miles of Wild and Scenic River designation in eight different states.

So why is the North Fork bill so different for Senate Republicans?

The answer reminds me of another Senate race 26 years ago, when President Reagan pocket-vetoed the last Montana wilderness bill to pass Congress in order to jam then-Senator John Melcher in his race against Conrad Burns.

For example, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is insisting on the opportunity to offer controversial amendments to the North Fork that would have brought down the entire proposal. This is a familiar ploy. The same Republican demand last fall (supported by Congressman Daines) caused the shutdown of the federal government for 16 days, costing Montana upwards of $45 million in lost business from Glacier and Yellowstone national parks alone.

I am confident that our senators will find a way to protect the North Fork. But how can Montanans trust Steve Daines when he won’t even stand up to his own allies in the Senate who help finance his campaign?

Larry Wilson: Collaborative forest planning continues

Commentary, Environmental Issues, , ,

Larry’s column is nicely timed this week. A lengthy series of Flathead National Forest Plan revision “stakeholder collaboration” meetings winds up tonight. Several North Fork folks have been participating.

In the more than 60 years I have been on the North Fork, I have been involved in a lot of planning efforts. These involved six years on the Flathead Basin Commission, 20 years on the Montana Governors Team negotiating with British Columbia, the Flathead County Planning Board, the North Fork group that started the Interlocal, and then the North Fork Land-Use Advisory Committee, which guided the Flathead County Commissioners from no planning to adopting a North Fork plan.

In addition, I have spent countless hours and several decades on groups or committees involved directly or indirectly with Flathead National Forest planning. All of these were slow-moving and acting and at times very frustrating, and I had decided I had done all that I could and would withdraw to the sidelines where I could comment on the new generation without spending time in meetings.

Then the Whitefish Range Partnership came along. I didn’t just jump on board but drug my feet for a month or more and finally agreed to be on the group, representing no one but myself as a North Fork resident.

Read more . . .

Wandering Oregon wolf may have found a mate

Environmental Issues, News, , , ,

Remember “OR7,” the Oregon-based wolf that created a stir when it wandered into Northern California a couple of years ago? It looks like it has found a mate and settled down in Oregon . . .

Oregon’s famous wandering gray wolf, dubbed OR-7, may have found the mate he has trekked thousands of miles looking for, wildlife authorities said Monday. It’s likely the pair spawned pups, and if confirmed, the rare predators would be the first breeding pair of wolves in the Oregon’s Cascade Range since the early 1900s.

Officials said cameras in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in the southern Cascades captured several images of what appears to be a female wolf in the same area where OR-7’s GPS collar shows he has been living.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist John Stephenson said it is not proof, but it is likely the two wolves mated over the winter and are rearing pups that would have been born in April. Biologists won’t start looking for a den until June, to avoid endangering the pups.

Read more . . .

Another lawsuit filed over forest priority nominations

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Another lawsuit challenges Gov. Steve Bullock’s nomination of  more than 5.1 million acres of national forest land in Montana as top priorities for restoration . . .

A new lawsuit has been filed over Gov. Steve Bullock’s nomination of 5.1 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land for priority management.

The complaint filed last week by Wildwest Institute, Conservation Congress and Friends of the Bitterroot is the second since Bullock forwarded his choices for expedited restoration and management to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in April.

Read more . . .

Study: sage grouse doing fine on Southeast Montana grazed lands

Environmental Issues, News, ,

There may be some bright spots in the sage grouse situation . . .

Cattle and greater sage grouse seem to be getting along just fine in southeastern Montana, according to a recent Fish Wildlife and Parks study, and that’s a big deal.

As sage grouse have been listed as a species worthy of protection under the Endangered Species Act, but precluded by higher priorities for now, western farmers and ranchers have been concerned about what the implications of such a decision might mean to the way they use the land.

“They’re real worried that if that bird gets listed, the federal government will come in and tell them how to manage that ground,” said Melissa Foster, an FWP biologist who was the lead author of a four-year study in Powder and Carter counties.

Read more . . .

Judge tells U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get off the dime on lynx recovery plan

Environmental Issues, News,

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was told in federal district court to get moving on a lynx recovery plan . . .

Saying a decade was long enough, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy this week ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finish its recovery plan for the imperiled Canada lynx, giving the agency 30 days to present its proposal.

Environmental groups that sued the agency lauded the decision as a critical and long-sought win for the wild cat. FWS said it would review Molloy’s ruling and determine its next move.

“We are reviewing the judge’s decisions and working on a strategy to comply with it,” said Leith Edgar, public affairs specialist with the Mountain-Prairie Region of FWS.

Read more . . .

George Wuerthner: Manage federal forest lands with all Americans in mind

Commentary, Environmental Issues, ,

In a Missoulian op-ed, George Wuerthner expresses misgivings about the impact of the forest restoration provisions in the new farm bill . . .

Recently the Bullock administration convened a committee to designate federal forest lands that could be logged under a special categorical exclusion provision of the recently passed Farm Bill.

This section of the Farm Bill repeals the National Environmental Policy Act to allow an unlimited number of commercial logging projects – up to 3,000 acres in size each – to be implemented on U.S. national forests without any environmental analysis of harmful effects to threatened/endangered or sensitive species. It would also eliminate administrative appeals, severely reducing public participation in forest management decisions.

Under the proposal, any lands outside of special set asides like wilderness areas and proposed wilderness deemed “threatened” by insects, disease or wildfire could be logged. Since insects, disease and wildfire are the major ecological processes that rejuvenate and restore forest ecosystems, and are found in all forested ecosystems, this means just about any federal forest lands could potentially be logged.

Read more . . .

See also: “Gov. Bullock lists 5.1 million acres of forest lands for restoration“

Inbred wolves struggle, moose thrive at Isle Royale NP

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

An interesting interplay between genetic diversity and climate change . . .

During their annual Winter Study at Isle Royale National Park, scientists from Michigan Technological University counted nine wolves organized into one breeding pack and a second small group that is a remnant of a formerly breeding pack.

In the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Study’s annual report released today, the researchers say that over the past three years, they have tallied the lowest numbers of wolves ever: nine in 2011-12, eight in 2012-13 and nine in 2013-14. During the same period, predation rates — the proportion of the moose population killed by wolves — also dropped to the lowest ever recorded, while the number of moose doubled, to approximately 1,050 moose.

Wolves are the only predators of moose on the remote island national park in northwestern Lake Superior. The moose population has been increasing because wolf predation has been so low.

Read more . . .

Judge won’t force protection of whitebark pine

Environmental Issues, News,

A federal judge turned down a suit to force protection of whitebark pine . . .

A federal judge has ruled against conservationists who sought to force the government to protect a high-elevation pine tree whose nuts are a food source for threatened grizzly bears.

The Wildwest Institute and Alliance for the Wild Rockies sued after the government designated in 2011 that protections for the whitebark pine tree were warranted, but precluded by other priorities.

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ruled on April 25 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designation leaves species such as the pine tree in limbo. But he declined to overturn the government finding, saying it’s up to Congress to allocate enough money to pay for protections.

Read more . . .