This will stir things up a bit . . .
President Barack Obama intends to nominate Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., as ambassador to China, Democratic officials said Wednesday, turning to a lawmaker well-versed in trade issues to fill one of the nation’s most sensitive diplomatic posts.
If confirmed by the Senate, Baucus would replace Ambassador Gary Locke, who announced last month he was stepping down.
An announcement of Baucus’ appointment is expected as early as Thursday.
Montana FWP released early numbers for this year’s Aquatic Invasive Species Program . . .
Preliminary results from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Aquatic Invasive Species Program show that 17 stations across the state inspected 30,376 watercraft and 367 failed.
That included 26,224 in-state and 4,152 out-of-state watercraft as of Sept. 30. Most of FWP’s roadside inspection stations closed after Labor Day, but several stayed open a few weeks later.
The violations broke down to 234 watercraft with vegetation that wasn’t Eurasian milfoil, 79 with standing water, 37 with Eurasian milfoil, 13 with zebra or quagga mussels, 10 with marine organisms and six with illegal bait.
Over at the Missoulian, Rob Chaney posted more information about the delay in extending federal protections to wolverines . . .
Disputes over the science of wolverines has prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take an extra six months of study before it decides whether to put the elusive carnivore on the endangered species list.
The agency already extended its public comment period once through Dec. 2, after receiving conflicting opinions on the reliability of available research earlier this year. Wolverines had been considered “warranted but precluded” from ESA protection until 2012, when FWS decided to make a more thorough review.
“During the six-month extension, we will be formally engaging with experts in the scientific community to further evaluate areas of scientific disagreement and uncertainty as they relate to the wolverine delisting,” the agency said in a written statement Tuesday. “We intend that any final action resulting from these proposals be based on the best scientific and commercial data available and be as accurate and as effective as possible.”
Note: The instructions in the article for retrieving information about the proposed rule to list wolverines under the Endangered Species Act have minor errors. The best approach seems to be to open the entire “docket folder” and browse the contents.
The feds kicked the can down the street a little farther, delaying a decision on placing wolverines under Endangered Species Act protection . . .
Federal wildlife officials have delayed until next summer a decision on whether wolverines should receive more federal protections.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday that the delay will be used to address questions about the impacts of climate change on wolverine habitat. Spokesman Steve Segin says the agency will decide by Aug. 4 if wolverines should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act gets its first real hearing when it comes in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week . . .
Sen. Jon Tester’s bill authorizing more logging and more wilderness in Montana goes before a Senate committee review on Thursday, four years after it was introduced.
“This is the first time the bill has been voted on anywhere in Congress,” said Paul Spitler, wilderness campaign director for the Wilderness Society in Bozeman. “It’s a pretty important day for this legislation for it to see a vote.”
The Forest Jobs and Recreation Act gets a markup hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee – a crucial step in moving legislation toward a vote of the whole chamber.
Rob Chaney of the Missoulian posted a good summary of the state of the grizzly bear recovery effort.
Recommended reading . . .
Since the grizzly bear was listed as a federally threatened species in 1975, it’s made a remarkable comeback.
Decades of active hunting and poisoning, habitat destruction, isolation and manipulation pushed it to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 United States. California used to have the most, even putting it on its state flag. Californians killed their last grizzly in 1922. It was erased from its native prairie grasslands by the 1880s, just eight decades after the Lewis and Clark journals gave urban Americans their first account of the great bear.
By 1940, after heavy use of strychnine poisoning by farmers and ranchers, wildlife managers estimated the United States had perhaps 300 grizzlies (not counting Alaska). Today, about 1,850 roam the mountains of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington.
“There’s been a real evolution of attitudes that got us to this point,” said Chris Servheen, the grizzly recovery manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula. “We used to be all about killing predators. Now we’re concerned about predators.
Our recent cold snap might have slowed the pine beetles down a little, but that’s about it. Still, this is a pretty interesting discussion of the issue . . .
Montana’s recent record-breaking cold snap probably didn’t cause widespread mortality in the state’s tree-eating mountain pine beetle population, but it may have killed beetles in localized areas, according to forest health experts.
“It really takes quite a bit to kill those guys,” Diana Six, a forest entomology and pathology professor at the University of Montana, said of the cooked-grain-of-rice-sized insects with big bites.
The insects can stand temperatures as low as 30 below, she said.
The Hungry Horse News covers the start of the collaborative planning phase of the Flathead Forest’s forest plan revision . . .
There were loggers and snowmobilers, environmentalists and motorcyclists, biologists and backcountry horsemen, all in one room, all looking for a stake in the future of the Flathead National Forest.
Over the course of the next six months, these diverse groups will sit down together in collaborative meetings to craft their vision of a new Forest Plan. More than 100 people attended the first meeting.
The collaborative meetings are just the start of the planning process. After the groups finish their efforts in May, the plan will go through a regular environmental review process starting next fall, with public scoping and public comments. A draft environmental impact statement is expected by June 2015. If all goes according to schedule, the Flathead Forest will have a new plan completed by September 2016.
A good article by Rob Chaney of the Missoulian on the recommendation to no longer list grizzlies as threatened in the Yellowstone region . . .
With new research showing grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park are going strong, Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee members unanimously called for ending federal protection of their namesake animal.
“This is not a decision to delist the grizzly,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly recovery coordinator Chris Servheen said after the vote was taken Wednesday. “It’s a recommendation to write a new rule.”
Higher authorities in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may decide by early January whether to follow the IGBC recommendation, made near the end of a two-day meeting in Missoula.
The Western Governors’ Association announced a mapping tool to help steer development activities away from areas of crucial habitat . . .
Governors in 16 states are unveiling a high-tech wildlife habitat mapping project they hope will encourage economic development across the West while protecting the region’s environmental treasures from Puget Sound to the Rocky Mountains. The Western Governors’ Association wants to make it easier to chart paths across large landscapes where developers can expect the least regulatory resistance and threat of litigation as they draft plans to build highways, dig gold mines and erect power lines, pipelines or wind farms.
Five years in the making, the database will connect 16 western states from California and Alaska to Montana and Oklahoma with a first-of-its-kind online system of colorful GIS maps displaying wildlife habitat, wetlands and other valuable natural resources — much of it detailed down to square-mile increments.
The Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool, or CHAT, provides layers of data that rate the resources on a scale of one to six, from most to least “crucial.” Individual states determine those priorities based on their information about such things as the condition of the habitat and the individual species’ economic and recreational importance.