MSU Wheeler Center Annual Spring Conference
A Discussion on Montana’s Energy and Agriculture Future
What does the future of agriculture and energy in Montana appear to be, particularly in the variable climate challenges we face?
This is the spotlight of the discussion at the Burton K. Wheeler Center’s statewide conference next week, “Climate Change in Montana: Impacts and Opportunities for Energy and Agriculture.”
On May 12-13, an immense conversation between the agriculture and energy sectors, environmental, educational and state agencies, legislators, officials and climate scientists will focus on Montana’s energy and agriculture sectors’ innovations and opportunities, climate challenges and its impacts, and future prices and outlook.
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Featured Photo
My Backyard, photo by Virginie More. The 2nd place winner in category "Landscape & Wildlife" from the Gallatin Grassroots Forum amateur photography contest, "Shaping the Future of our Valley: Picturing Our Place." More says, “I find it interesting that bald eagles are finally back in the Gallatin Valley. It is also amazing to see wildlife getting so close to humans. As the habitations in the valley are spreading out, should we be concerned by the cohabitation of wildlife and humans?
From the Flathead Beacon Blog
Obama’s Lead on Clinton May End Montana’s Swan Song
The chances of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton returning to Montana took a hit Tuesday night. After Obama’s crushing victory in North Carolina and Clinton’s narrow win in Indiana, the majority of pundits have declared the race all but over. I hope not. The state press has been blanketed with high-profile attention from each campaign over the last few weeks and it would be a shame to find out that the media was simply used for political gain.
Since Obama and Clinton visited Montana last month, and subsequently opened campaign field offices across the state, the local press has been constantly updated on why each candidate is absolutely great and has the state’s best interests in mind. You see, we’re passed a deluge of daily notes, many with personal touches.
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LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT
Wilderness is Multiple Use
Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer "multiple use" over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!
So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, "multiple use" have been lost in the Wilderness.
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By spending time with the land, you know
Sense of Place: Understanding Microclimates in the Gallatin Valley
Most people are aware of regional differences in climate. The Southeast is hot and humid. The Southwest is hot and dry. But in the Intermountain West, mountains affect air currents and moisture distribution to create many microclimates within just one valley. Visitors don’t recognize those microclimates. Most residents find out about them by trial and error.
At the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, I met a couple in their mid 30’s that were visiting from Las Vegas. They said they were tired of the rat race and were looking for a place with a little acreage, to garden and maybe raise some livestock. The first question they asked me was “How much snow do you get here?”
“It depends on what part of the Gallatin Valley you are in,” I replied. They looked at me blankly.
“The climate isn’t the same across the whole valley,” I explained.
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New West News Brief
TERRA Video Series Explores Bison Issue
As the controversy over the Yellowstone National Park’s population of bison continues, Bozeman-based TERRA shares a three-part video series on the “free-ranging” population’s scenerio and the hazing that is occurring. (Click video above for a preview of the series.)
As there are passionate people on both sides of the debate, this series tries to understand all sides of this issue.
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In The New West magazine
Montana’s Cash Cowboy
If you didn't know any better, you might think William Patrick (Bill) Foley II was just another retiring baby boomer looking for golf courses, open spaces and the chance to recapture an idealized childhood of summertimes on the family ranch. A frank man with an almost goofy charm, he speaks of his love for Montana, his concern for the landscape -- and the joy he gets bombing around the backcountry on an ATV or a snowmobile.
But the truth is, Foley isn't very good at leisure. He's got the fancy log home on Whitefish Lake, five West Coast wineries, the huge cattle ranch near Deer Lodge, and the requisite private jets, but he can't seem to help turning everything into a business.
Foley appears to be in a much better spot than most of the Wall Street moguls, Silicon Valley financiers and high-rolling property developers who see the surging "amenity economy" in the Mountain West as the next great capitalist frontier. In some ways, he's representative of the breed: a very rich man who's become enamored with the West, and whose first instinct is to buy it.
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Western Book Roundup
Lynn Rossetto Kasper Visits Boulder & Desert Writing Award Announced
The Boulder Farmer's Market will open for its first Wednesday afternoon of the season today, kicking off with a book signing and talk by Lynn Rossetto Kasper, host of NPR's The Splendid Table. She'll be discussing her new book, How to Eat Supper. (Free, 5:30-6:30 p.m.)
The Bluff, Utah-based Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers announced that this year's winner of their annual award is Joe Wilkins. Wilkins plans to study and write about the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains from Texas to Montana.
Also in the Roundup: Margot Kahn tours behind Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, and WyoFile.com excerpts Alexandra Fuller's new book.
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Idaho and Washington Feel the Pain
Montana Banks Remain Remote from National CrunchAsk Tom Welch, president of Pioneer Federal Savings and Loan (offices in Dillon and Deer Lodge, Mont.) about his mortgage portfolio: "Great," he says, "As good as it's been. I can't tell you the last time I've had a foreclosure."
Even as risky national lending practices and the collapse of the housing bubble have pulled the national economy into recession, lenders in Montana remain largely unaffected by mortgage losses. Banks in the state haven't been hurt much by the credit crunch, either, because few swing big leveraged financial deals, bankers say.
"Montana has some foreclosure hot spots," said Helena branch president Paul Drake of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "But we haven't seen the kind of issues like Arizona or Nevada, not even close to it."
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book review
Sirota’s Tour of America: There Are All Kinds of Uprisings
Reading The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Searing Wall Street and Washington, by David Sirota, is a bit like a cross-country road trip with an insistent guy who talks the whole time.
The thing is, Sirota's saying stuff you should probably hear, and he goes to places you need to go, but he's tough to follow at first. He starts in Helena, Mont., with a barrage of information about the partisan political machinations of the state's most recent biannual legislature, and he tosses other stuff in at a dizzying pace and with a good dose of populist outrage: from vermiculite poisoning in Libby to Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting of his hunting companion to century-old labor wars to an aside about how some Helena locals referred to him (Sirota) as a "city mouse."
His story gains traction when it becomes clear that he's not finding a uniform populist movement in America where there isn't any. Sirota reports on the outrage felt by working people, whether it is channeled toward big business or misdirected at Mexican immigrants.
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CLASS ACTION SUITS TO BE FILED TUESDAY IN ARIZONA, COLORADO
Public Land Owners Taking RAT, Forest Service to Civil Court
Enough is enough, say the owners of our national forests. And they may have finally found a way to spike the Recreation Access Tax or RAT.
After years of working through cumbersome administrative channels and several rounds in criminal court, people interested in reasonable and free access to their public land have dragged the Forest Service (FS) into civil court. In addition to asking for injunctions against collecting "illegal" fees while the case is being litigated and if successful the fee program terminated, the plaintiffs in the class action complaints--to be filed tomorrow morning in Arizona and Colorado--want all fee collection signs removed and all fees collected through the years under the program returned to the people who shouldn't have had to pay them.
Suffice to say, it's panic time in the FS offices back in Washington, D.C.
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