Unfiltered Commentary
Trapping Season Opens in Montana
You’d have to live under a rock to miss the hoopla surrounding the build-up to hunting season in Montana. This yearly autumn ritual, as visible as the blazing larches, is a seasonal marker for hunters and nonhunters alike. You just can’t miss its bold entrance.
Another season opened in Montana on November 1st, but this one flies under the public radar stealthily, secretly. Furbearer trapping commences on public lands and waterways without fanfare, attracting virtually no notice. How many wildlife-enthusiasts realize that, beginning this day, beaver, otter, muskrat, and mink fall prey to choking snares, crippling foothold traps, and body-crushing Conibear traps? That for some, like beaver, the brutality of the trap ends in subsequent, panicked drowning?
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Conservation Groups Appeal Lolo National Forest Decision for Industrial Logging in Unroaded Wildland
Restoration or Exploitation?Claiming that the Fishtrap project perfectly illustrates the failed nature of the current U.S. Forest Service management scheme for restoring forests, the Ecology Center, Native Forest Network and Alliance for the Wild Rockies have filed a formal administrative appeal over the Fishtrap logging project that calls for industrial logging in unroaded wildlands, old-growth forests and habitat for grizzly bears and bull trout. [more]
