It looks like mud season — er, uh… Spring — is on its way.
According to an article in the Flathead Beacon, “Grizzly and black bears are emerging from their dens in Glacier National Park.” If they are up and foraging for food in the park, we’ll likely be seeing them on the North Fork, too.
Glacier National Park has started its spring plowing activities. The Daily Inter Lake has extensive details on scheduling and restrictions. The Park Service also posted a press release.
OK, it looks like the Daily Mistake Inter Lake was in error the other day when they listed “a $4.1 million rebuild of the North Fork Road, with paving to the Camas entrance of Glacier National Park” as being on the Flathead County wish list for federal stimulus funds. According to a brief note from Jack Potter, who is Chief of the Division of Science and Resources Management for Glacier National Park, the money would be used for such things as “the washout on the Camas hill and the replacement of the Akokala Creek Bridge.” So, these funds are being requested to make repairs affecting the perpetually disheveled inside North Fork Road on the park side of the river.
This week’s Hungry Horse News has a pretty good overview of the threats faced by Glacier National Park over the next few decades . . .
In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson signed the “Organic Act” which created the National Park Service. In that bill, it said the Service has a purpose “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
In Glacier National Park, that mantra is becoming harder and harder to accomplish, admits Jack Potter, as the Park is besieged by both internal and external threats, most of which are not of its own making.
Read the entire article . . .
From the Tuesday, November 24, 2008 online edition of the Missoulian . . .
When Glacier National Park celebrates its big birthday in 2010, not a few folk are hoping the 100 candles on the centennial cake will be arranged in the shape of a giant “W.”
That’s capital “W,” as in formal wilderness status, a designation that has eluded these 1 million acres since the early 1970s.
Read the entire article . . .
Note: This was the third in a series of articles the Missoulian published concerning Glacier National Park. The previous articles were “Park turns to private donations” and “Glacier road in funding limbo.“