From today’s Missoulian . . .
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has inserted language into the Senate’s Continuing Resolution – the bill that funds the entire national budget – declaring the gray wolf a recovered species in Montana and Idaho.
The $1.077 trillion, seven-month spending bill is expected to reach a full Senate vote on Tuesday, and then return to the House of Representatives.
According to a note from Dave Hadden of Headwaters Montana, the Third Annual Wild Places Photo Exhibition needs cookies . . .
We need cookies and other treats to sell at the “Wild Places” photo exhibition on March 11 in Whitefish as part of our fundraising effort to continue the Work! Please call Meg Wolfe if you can bake a plate of cookies or other treats.
Meg’s contact: lullwolfe@msn.com or 863-9501.
Thanks for your help in making Wild Places a success. See you there!
A bit of a kerfuffle over a policy change at the U.S. Department of the Interior . . .
Republican governors and members of Congress vowed Tuesday to fight an Obama administration plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection.
This well-written, well-researched article by Rob Chaney of the Missoulian is recommended reading for anyone interested in the challenges still to come in protecting the Trans-boundary Flathead . . .
Now that the trans-boundary conference calls and Washington, D.C., hand-shaking sessions are over, a lot remains to finish in protecting the Flathead River between British Columbia and Montana.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s Valentine’s Day announcement that two conservation groups were providing $9.4 million to buy out mining claims on the Canadian side of the Flathead didn’t include all the details of the deal. One significant omission was that while the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy is raising its half of the money through private donations, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is dipping into a $225 million Canadian government fund for its contribution.
A very informative article posted late last night to the Missoulian’s web site . . .
While about 80 percent of existing energy exploration leases in the North Fork Flathead have been retired by the world’s leading oil, gas and mining companies, a handful of parcels remain in contention by smaller firms.
Those holdings include nearly 138,000 acres in Flathead County that extend into the Haskill Basin drainage, the primary source of Whitefish’s drinking water supply, as well as along the western edge of Glacier National Park in the Flathead National Forest and underneath Big Mountain.
This week’s Hungry Horse News column by Larry Wilson discusses the recent actions on both sides of the border to protect the North Fork watershed and takes a look at what might be coming next. His column is, as usual, recommended reading . . .
Since Gov. Brian Schweitzer signed a memorandum of understanding with British Columbia, which promised up to 17 million dollars to Canadian companies for reimbursement for cash already spent, we have all wondered where he would find the money. Montana could not pay and for months efforts were made, without success, to get Uncle Sam to foot the bill.
Now it seems that an answer has been found! The Nature Conservancy of Canada and the U.S. Nature Conservancy have committed $9.4 million to the government of British Columbia to conclude the British Columbia-Montana memo of understanding signed a year ago. As part of the deal, the province of British Columbia will enact legislation banning the extraction of minerals, oil, gas, and coal within the watershed. With the two nature conservancy groups coming up with this money, protection of the upper North Fork is an important step towards completion.
This article on the Sierra Club BC’s web site does a good job of putting the current actions by the B.C. government to protect the Canadian part of the Flathead valley in context.
Here’s the lead-in . . .
Legislation to prohibit mining and energy development in the Flathead River Valley is only the first of three steps the B.C. government must take to protect the Flathead permanently, said Sierra Club BC in a recent press release.
On February 15, 2011, the B.C. premier’s office issued a statement that “the Province has signed an agreement to sustain environmental values in the Flathead Valley, and will introduce legislation to support the 2010 MOU on Environmental Protection, Climate Action and Energy with the State of Montana.”
“While the legislation is an important step, it does not equate to long-term conservation for the Flathead River Valley,” said Sierra Club BC spokesperson Sarah Cox. “It’s a complete stretch to say that the Flathead is forever protected.”
As we mentioned earlier, a group of Montana photographers is getting together to benefit Headwaters Montana, a non-profit organization working to protect the Flathead and Elk Valley watersheds, the Glacier and Waterton Parks and the Crown of the Continent ecosystem.
According to Dave Hadden of Headwaters Montana,
Thirteen of the region’s top photographers will display amazing wildlife, mountain scenery, and people in Nature. The artists’ work will be projected on the Big Screen, and 13 of their photos will be raffled off during the evening with great chances to win the photo of your choice. Reception with appetizers and beer and wine for sale. This event supports Headwaters Montana’s work to protect the water, wildlife and outdoor heritage in the Crown of the Continent.
Sally Mauk, news director at KUFM, Montana Public Radio, runs a twice-monthly column in the Missoulian. Her most recent discusses the world-wide spread of rainbow trout from its native home on the Pacific Rim. I’ve tossed it in here because it is pretty interesting and because there’s a North Fork connection.
Here’s an excerpt from the North Fork reference . . .
And then there’s the Frankenstein effect. All this mucking with nature has created fish hybrids, especially in waters where rainbow and westslope cutthroat trout have interbred. Halverson was fishing once in the North Fork of the Flathead, where it’s catch-and-release only for westslope cutthroat, when he caught a trout that was so hybridized, he was stumped.
The Daily Inter Lake has nice things to say today about the recently concluded deal to protect the Flathead drainage . . .
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the recently announced commitment of the Nature Conservancy to provide about $9.4 million to seal a deal between Montana and British Columbia that will prevent mining in the Canadian headwaters of the Flathead River Basin.
It’s even harder to overstate what a sweet deal it is. Montana businesses, conservation groups and political leaders have been battling mining proposals in the British Columbia Flathead drainage for the last 30 years, never really knowing when the next battle would come.
Now, because of a memorandum of understanding between the province and the state that was announced a year ago, there is a prohibition on mining in the remote and pristine drainage that feeds Montana’s North Fork Flathead River.