Missoula News

A CHANGE THAT'S LONG OVERDUE

UPDATED Friday, March 12, 1 pm:
I used this headline once before when writing about Mark Rey, former Bush Administration Undersecretary of Agriculture and boss of the Forest Service. Prior to Rey’s Reign of Terror, California Republican Congressmen Richard Pombo held the honor of being the biggest enemy of public lands. Voters booted him in 2006, but he’s back, running for Congress again this year.

Now, we have a new Public Lands Enemy No. 1, none other than current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Today marks the end of Week 1 of MontCAS testing at Missoula public schools. Montana Comprehensive Assessment System is a series of standardized tests administered each spring under the heinous, deceptively-named No Child Left Behind program implemented by Congress in 2002. You would think from the very title of the program that the federal government will be providing assistance to lagging or underperforming students, in order to improve the U.S.’s educational standards and better prepare our youth to compete on the international stage.

Oh, hell no. NCLB is all stick, no carrot. Citing our “failing public schools” (which is bullshit), what President Bush and his duplicitous cronies did was create a system of punishment with no reward, putting pressure solely on state and local school systems to take several weeks away from their standard curricula in order to “teach to the test.” The MontCAS and other NCLB tests are geared solely to math and reading comprehension. No science, no social studies, no history, and none of that pesky arts and music that is cloggin’ up these kids’ heads.

Species Conservation

Land birds found throughout the Rocky Mountain West need human help.

Dr. David Pashley, Vice President of American Bird Conservancy – the nation’s leading bird conservation organization – cautioned today that as climate change impacts are increasingly felt throughout the United States and beyond, conservation efforts affecting birds will take on a doubly important role in protecting not only birds that are already threatened, but more common birds as well.

Dr. Pashley made his comments in connection with Thursday’s release of State of the Birds 2010, the first comprehensive vulnerability assessment of bird species to climate change across the United States. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the report’s release at a press conference in Texas, along with several environmental organizations including American Bird Conservancy that had collaborated on the publication.  Dr. Pashley was one of the authors of the report.

“Our findings tell us that birds of conservation concern today will be in even greater peril in the future as a result of climate change, and many bird species that are now doing well may soon become conservation priorities as global warming progresses,” Dr. Pashley said.

The report identified common Rocky Mountain West bird species such as the common nighthawk and northern pintail that are likely to become species of conservation concern as a result of climate change. 

News Nugget

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says talk of his department creating new national monuments in Montana and other Western states was just “brainstorming.”

The issue became big news after after an internal memo about the subject was leaked last month, setting off alarms in many, if not all, Western congressional offices and certainly across the Rockies. Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg is even planning legislation that would halt such activity.

But, Salazar maintains that the feds are not out for a land grab. He tells Ledyard King of the Gannett Washington Bureau in today’s ,Great Falls Tribune, “They were brainstorming sessions that basically said, ‘These are the areas that could be protected, and the way you protect them is through a variety of different means, and this is one option, but it doesn’t mean that’s the option that we select.”

And, when Sen. Jon Tester’s questioned him about the issue at a Tuesday hearing, he said, “There are no plans that we have to move forward” and that there have been “no directions from the White House that we move forward on monument designation.”

King’s story in the Tribune is a good exploration of the issue, read it here.

Western book Roundup

It might not be spring yet, but it sure feels like it here in Colorado, where our piles of November snow have finally started to melt and some crocuses are peeking out of the ground.  With the change in season comes a bunch of regional book awards and event announcements:

• Stories on Stage, a Denver theater company that presents literature through performances by professional actors, will present The Stories of Your Life based on the work of Jim Sheeler on March 13 (5 & 8 p.m., Jones Theater, DCPA). Sheeler, a former reporter for the Rocky Mountain News who won a Pulitzer Prize for his series Final Salute (later published as a book of the same name), honed his skills as a journalist by writing obituaries.  He collected his favorites in the book Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who Led Extraordinary Lives, which Peggy Lowe reviewed for New West.

• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Great Falls resident Jamie Ford is the winner of the 2009 Montana Book Award. 

MAX'S 30-YEAR CRUSADE

Montana is home to some of the most gorgeous landscapes in the world. From the plains of the east, to the mountains of the west, we are incredibly blessed to be able to call it home. And there is one area that holds a special place for me: the North Fork.

One of the best parts of my year is when the weather starts to turn warm and I can get away for a weekend to Glacier or the surrounding areas. I love looking at the deep blue of Lake McDonald or the crystal clear water of the North Fork. I love staring up at the soaring peaks, and experiencing the awe when you hear names like Jackson and Stimson. I love the wildlife and the ruggedness. 

OVER THE WEEKEND IN MONTANA

Last December, during a congressional hearing on the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act (NFJA), the Department of Agriculture’s testimony was anything but encouraging to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT). However, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack unrolled a new approach to this controversial bill on Saturday including clear support for its wilderness and timber infrastructure objectives.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Still digesting the first grilled food of the season. Every time I burp it smells like burnt moth wings.

Of course I cleaned the grill, but most of my efforts went into the surfaces the food will be touching. Now that we’ve got that first grilled meal behind us, I’ll be scorching meat almost every day from now till around Halloween. If this global warming thing can’t be solved, I might even be flipping ribs into December this year.

But after a full winter of squatting on the back porch looking like Darth Vader’s Thalidomide baby, my ten-year-old propane Sunbeam was in need of some major cleaning and maintenance. I started to pull off the heavy vinyl cover, and it quickly became apparent that I’d put in on after a few too many gin ‘n tonics last fall, not really waiting for the grill to cool off between drunken rounds of backyard horseshoes. The cover had melted to parts of the grill housing, so I used the burger flipper to pry it loose. Well, it was probably time for a new cover anyway.

From the Flathead Beacon

When he retires from Plum Creek Timber Co. at the end of the month, Hank Ricklefs will feel much better about stepping down from his position as vice president of northern resources and manufacturing than he would have a year ago at this time.

“It was absolute turmoil,” he said of 2009. “No one had a solid feeling for where the bottom was.”

New West Book Review

Claiming Ground
by Laura Bell
Knopf, 239 pages, $24.95

In her remarkable memoir, Claiming Ground, Cody’s Laura Bell offers up exquisite snapshots from her life spent working as a sheepherder, ranch hand, forest ranger, and masseuse.  Bell’s adventure began when she was a minister’s daughter just out of college, back home in Kentucky, and couldn’t think of what to do with herself but to pursue her “childhood’s private world blown larger than life, with a horse, two dogs, a rifle, a wilderness.” In 1977, she came west with her sister, whose husband was a paleontologist working on a dig in Wyoming, and she never left.

Claiming Ground begins with an account of Bell’s early days spent herding sheep in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, where she was one of the only women in this occupation.  At one point she and the sheep are restless in the heat, anxious to leave for the higher ground of their summer pasture.  The man who tends Bell’s camp tells her the road up to the pasture is “a son-of-a-gun” and it proves to be a difficult journey with her horse and sheep.  Bell writes, “We’d made it, though not without false starts and backtracks to find the single spot of grace that might let us through.”