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Oral Arguments Heard Thursday

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula heard oral arguments Thursday in a case brought by environmental groups to return gray wolves in the Northern Rockies.

Molloy did not rule, but his decision is expected in the next several days on whether to grant a preliminary injunction and return wolf management to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service while a lawsuit challenging the federal decision to delist the wolf proceeds.

The plaintiffs, a coalition of 12 environmental and animal rights groups represented by the environmental legal firm Earthjustice, asked for the injunction to immediately stop the killing of wolves under state management and prevent wolf hunts proposed for the fall. [more]

"the largest land acquisition in American history"

U.S. Senator Max Baucus announced a potentially historic private land conservation project on Friday, aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of Plum Creek forestland in western Montana from development.

The project, which has the potential to be “the largest land acquisition in American history,” will conserve critical fish and wildlife habitat, ensure continued access to public land and reduce the cost of fighting wildfire by limiting development in the so-called wildland-urban interface, Baucus said.

“We’re doing something to pass on our enduring legacy and values to our kids and grandkids,” he said. [more]

12 Groups file on first day allowed

As expected, a coalition of 12 environmental and animal-rights groups filed suit today in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont. seeking to overturn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove gray wolves in the Northern Rockies from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The lawsuit seeks a immediate injunction to protect gray wolves from public hunting and aims to return the wolf to federal management under the Endangered Species Act. Gray wolves were officially delisted on March 28th.

“We’re trying to prevent the wolf slaughter from going forward,” said Doug Honnold, managing attorney of the Bozeman office of Earthjustice, the legal organization representing the coalition.

The groups argue state management plans fail to provide adequate protection for the species, especially against indiscriminate public hunting. Instead of protection, state management actually promotes the killing of wolves, Honnold said. [more]

"i'm still in this race!"

The Ron Paul Revolution rolled into Missoula Monday night to raucous cheers and whistles from a standing room only crowd on the University of Montana campus, despite the fact that his opponent John McCain has already secured the Republican presidential nomination.

“People ask, are you still in this race or aren’t you? Sure I’m still in this race!” Paul said, eliciting loud chants of “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul” from the crowd of more than a thousand people. “I’m in the race as long as the supporters want me in the race. It’s their campaign,” Paul said, who vowed to fight on to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. in September.

Paul wasted no time in getting to the core principles of his anti-establishment message: liberty and limited government.

“The opposite of liberty is big government. If we want more liberty, we have to shrink the size of our government,” Paul said. [more]

growth and rivers

Streamside setback regulations protect a stream from “death by a thousand cuts” hydrogeologist Dr. Chris Brick told City Club Missoula at its monthly luncheon Monday.

By themselves, a single home or a stretch of rip-rapped bank do not present much danger to a stream, but collectively, all the structures, armored stretches of bank and cleared riparian vegetation do, said Brick, the staff scientists for the Clark Fork Coalition, an organization focused on community development and environmental protection of the Clark Fork River.

“What we’re concerned about is how we can maintain our Montana values for our streams and rivers in the face of lots of people wanting to come here,” Brick said. [more]

A PREDATOR BECOMES PREY

Hunting outfitter Ray Rugg toes a crusted depression in the snow. "Wolf tracks," he says. The tracks crisscross this small meadow past a piece of front leg and scraps of hide, the last remains of a white-tail deer.

On this damp early Spring afternoon Rugg's only looking for signs of the six wolves he frequently sees on his ranch in the rugged Bitterroot Mountains west of Superior, Montana. But come September, these predators will become prey. Rugg plans to guide hunters into these mountains on both sides of the Montana-Idaho border when the first legal wolf hunting season in the contiguous United States begins.

"I already got a line of clients waiting to put in an application if the hunt goes through," Rugg says.

As the first wolf hunts begin in the Northern Rockies, state and federal wildlife officials hail the transition to state management with public hunting as a major step forward in wolf conservation. They say it will develop greater acceptance and a conservation constituency for the contentious carnivore among hunters like Rugg and the public at large, because citizens will have a hand in management. But critics contend that a more enlightened ethic is unlikely, and the wolf's long-entrenched malevolent symbolism, and the backlash it incites, will persist. [more]

Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers Merge

This is how they breach a dam, not with a surge but a trickle.

Hundreds of people piled into viewing areas on both sides of the Clark Fork River Friday, while scores more gathered along the river’s banks to witness the historic breach of the Milltown Dam.

“I’m going to lookout there and tell those guys for the first time in 100 years, let ‘er run!” hollered Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the last of a line of keynote speakers.

With that, a lone yellow excavator worked to remove the last buckets of mud holding back the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers. Cheers and claps rose from the crowd a few minutes later as a trickle of water gurgled through the new pilot channel where the old brick powerhouse once stood.

For the first time in more than a century, the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers began to flow freely. [more]

endangered species act

Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains will be officially removed from the endangered species list and responsibility for their management turned over to the states today.

“Overall this is a real positive step for wolf recovery and wolf management,” said Steve Nadeau, large carnivore coordinator for the Idaho department of fish and game. “The Endangered Species Act is designed to delist wolves. You don’t put them there to keep them there.”

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming will assume full management responsibility from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the wolves in their states under federally approved management plans, and all three states’ plans include wolf hunting. The first wolf hunting season could come as early as this fall. [more]

superfund cleanup

The removal of Milltown Dam marked another milestone Tuesday when the Blackfoot River poured into the bypass channel dug along Interstate 90.

Project managers chose to backfill the channel from the Blackfoot River first to protect equipment and better manage downstream flows, said Ben Johnson, an Envirocon project engineer.

On Friday, Envirocon workers will remove the steel and earthen coffer dam at the channel’s inlet to reroute the Clark Fork River and Deer Creek into the bypass channel in anticipation of the next big event, the breach of the Milltown dam itself. [more]

boon or bust?

The proposed Bitterroot Resort would have a “significant economic impact” on Missoula and Ravalli Counties Dick King, president and CEO of the Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation told a crowd of about 75 people gathered at the Lolo Community Center Tuesday night, but the reaction from the public was decidedly cautious.

King presented the final draft of the Bitterroot Resort Economic Impact Analysis report for public review during the Lolo Community Council’s regularly scheduled meeting. The report, which was prepared by the Portland-based consulting firm ECONorthwest, analyzed the potential economic impacts to Missoula and Ravalli Counties of both a small and big version of the proposed Bitterroot Resort south of Lolo. [more]

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