It is still a fairly quiet fire season in this corner of Montana. The Daily Inter Lake has an overview . . .
The National Weather Service is forecasting a weather front that should cool down Western Montana fires, including a new one that recently emerged northeast of Libby.
A weather system is expected to invade the Northern Rockies Wednesday into Thursday, producing much lower temperatures and showers.
From an AP article posted to today’s Flathead Beacon . . .
A federal appeals court on Thursday denied a request by environmental groups to halt wolf hunts that are scheduled to begin next week in Idaho and Montana.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other groups. The groups were seeking to cancel the hunts while the court considers a challenge to congressional action in April that stripped wolves of federal protections in Montana and Idaho, and in parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah.
The month is not complete without at least one road-related post. This one is courtesy of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The road dust control project in Flathead County has wrapped up for the season, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty recently told commissioners.
Magnesium chloride was applied to 43 miles of county-maintained gravel roads in a cooperative effort between the county and landowners. The total project cost was $244,000, with the county paying half and people who own property along the roads where the material was applied paying the other half.
From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The Hammer Creek Fire appears to have doubled in size over the last two or three days, according to updated reports on three active fires in Northwest Montana.
The Hammer Creek Fire, now estimated at 2,800 acres, has burned northeast from the South Fork Flathead River basin into the Lime Creek drainage, where fire managers had wanted it to go because of rocky ridges and other natural barriers that will eventually slow it down.
From the Daily Inter Lake (with photos) . . .
Firefighters continued to tangle with a new fire east of Stryker while two fires in the Bob Marshall Wilderness were mostly unaffected by stiff winds Tuesday.
Soon after the Fitzsimmons Fire was detected Monday near the confluence of Fitzsimmons Creek and upper Stillwater Creek, it grew to 60 acres in steep, timbered terrain.
“They do have it 75 percent lined,” said Brian Manning, manager of the Stillwater State Forest. “The fire behavior was moderate enough that they could work on it directly today with some air support.”
The fire raises concerns about the potential for it to move upslope into the Whitefish Range.
The Missoulian posted this item late yesterday. I’d take it with a grain of salt, especially the “extended summer” bit . . .
Although September is but a week away and students are returning to school, summer weather and wildfire season in Montana is far from over.
In fact, “we are hitting our peak right now,” said Brian Henry, a fire weather forecaster and meteorologist at the Northern Rockies Coordination Center.
“The next two weeks will be the most active part of our season and computer models tell us we will have an extended summer into September, and the fire season will likely linger before going to sleep on us.”
The various Glacier Park concessionaires — from restaurants to outfitters to bus and boat services — start closing down in September as temperatures and tourist traffic drop. The park office has posted the fall schedule for these various operations.
You can view it here: http://www.nps.gov/glac/parknews/news11-67.htm
From today’s Daily Inter Lake . . .
Fire crews scrambled Monday to two new fires: one north of Whitefish and one southwest of Tally Lake.
One new wildfire is in the Stillwater State Forest at the junction of Fitzsimmons Creek and the Stillwater River…
Elsewhere, about six initial attack firefighters responded to a fire that was less than two acres southwest of Tally Lake, but it was enough of a handful for a helicopter and a 20-person crew to be called in to help…
From the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Fire activity was relatively quiet Saturday, with fires in Northwest Montana gaining little ground.
The South Fork Lost Creek Fire, which is burning southeast of Swan Lake, grew just 60 acres from when it was sized Friday afternoon. That is due in part to a burnout operation firefighters conducted Friday, which was used to create a break in front of an active part of the fire.
Timothy Egan posted an interesting “Opinionator” piece to the New York Times today titled “Nature Without the Nanny State.” It discusses the rising incidence of city-bred visitors ignoring common sense precautions when visiting national parks, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Here’s the meat of the piece . . .
More than ever, an urban nation plagued by obesity, sloth and a surfeit of digital entertainment should encourage people to experience the wild — but does that mean nature has to be tame and lawyer-vetted?
My experience, purely anecdotal, is that the more rangers try to bring the nanny state to public lands, the more careless, and dependent, people become. There will always be steep cliffs, deep water, and ornery and unpredictable animals in that messy part of the national habitat not crossed by climate-controlled malls and processed-food emporiums. If people expect a grizzly bear to be benign, or think a glacier is just another variant of a theme park slide, it’s not the fault of the government when something goes fatally wrong.