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A 'TOURIST EVENT' IN BAKER, MONTANA

Coyotes. What good are they? "I don't know why God put them on this Earth. If He put them on this world to give us sport for hunting, maybe. But I'll tell you what, they do a lot of damage to livestock."

Thus says Jerrid Geving, a hunter and organizer of an annual coyote-calling and shooting contest in the hardscrabble town of Baker, located in far eastern Montana. The event is sheduled to commence again this weekend but will be accompanied by the kind of public outcry one mght expect. Originally started five years ago to attract tourist dollars to the tiny community, it offers $6,000 in prize money, according to a story written by Associated Press reporter Matthew Brown.

For myriad reasons, the contest is controversial, not the least of which is the contention made by its organizers that they're doing it on behalf of ranchers to help protect livestock. [more]

LIVINGSTON ENTERPRISE FIRES SALVO

Bozeman, Montana has always assumed an air of superiority when referencing Livingston— that smaller neighboring, bare-knuckled, blue-collar, railroad and river town on the eastern side of Bozeman Pass along Interstate 90.

Back and forth across the Pass, the friendly civic jeering has gone on for years, like crowds at a high school football game heckling one another from opposite sides of the field.

Now, in another act of attempted one upsmanship, a fresh barb has been cast at Bozeman in the form of an editorial hand grenade lobbed by Stephen Matlow, managing editor of the Livingston Enterprise. "Once a beautiful town in an ideal setting," Matlow wrote, "it has now turned into something butt-ugly where any Californian would feel comfortable." [more]

DAVE FOREMAN: IT'S STILL ABOUT POPULATION, STUPID

Dave Foreman is nothing, if not a real deal enigma. Today, there are many preconceived portrayals of the man floating around, often perpetuated by people who have never met him but who base their own authority of opinion on the ether of myths and legends, of which the American West is chock full.

Some of these characterizations of Foreman—as a renegade, Leftist, anarchist, neo-Luddite, wimpy-minded, let's-revert-society-back-to-the-Stone Age madman—are inaccurate. But it's true that Foreman is radically progressive and pushy when it comes to challenging the status quo. On New Year's Day, 2007, Foreman published his second "Around the Campfire" column distributed through his organization, The Rewilding Institute.

The piece which follows is titled "Birth Dearth Folly and the 300 Millionth American" and is inspired by writings from a current book in progress. The issue of human population, which Foreman writes about, is one that has caused a schizophrenic reaction within the environmental movement because it involves not only American-style resource consumption and depletion but the delicate matters of immigration, the real effects of globalization in populous nations like China and India, and the inability of greens sometimes to have meaningful conversations with people whose skin color is not white. [more]

2006 5TH WARMEST IN BILLINGS SINCE 1934

El Nino has returned and weather forecasters believe that means another mild winter for the high plains of the U.S. West. While any claims linking the recurrence of El Nino—a cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean—to human-caused climate change is still, at this moment, unproved, what isn't speculation is that the temperature last year went up in central and eastern Montana.

"Globally, 2006 was the sixth-warmest year on record; nationally, it ranked third. In Billings, last year was the fifth-warmest since record-keeping began at the airport in 1934," writes Montana reporter Lorna Thackeray in a story appearing in the Billings Gazette Friday headlined 2006 Was A Warm One In Billings.

It's too early to tell how dry it could turn out to be and whether that portends another large wildfire season come summer.

"Forecasting how 2007 will turn out is not a sure science. There are indications that the rest of the winter, in general, will be warmer and drier than normal," Thackeray writes, adding: "The Climate Prediction Center forecasts below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation through Jan. 13. The CPC predicts that the El Nino will peak in February and weaken from March through May."

CHRISTENSEN DOCUMENTARY FEATURED ON PBS'S 'NOW'

The controversy in Idaho over how to manage hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in the White Cloud and Boulder Mountains represents, in many ways, a commentary about the status of the modern wilderness movement in America. This week, journalist Jon Christensen makes his debut as a television field correspondent when he profiles the White Clouds debate on the PBS program NOW scheduled to air Friday night on public TV channels across the country. Read about Christensen's documentary and the New West interview with him. [more]

HOW THE VENERABLE OLD GRAY LADY IS COVERING GLOBAL WARMING

When it comes to writing about climate change and the continuing evolution of the political discussion in America, no reporter does it better or more astutely than Andrew Revkin of The New York Times.

Andy's work is crackerjack and he, too, has been a reader of the reports on climate change that have appeared here at New West. As a journalistic colleague and friend, I have the utmost respect for his work. The following is a note that Andy passed along today and New West readers should find it to be of great interest, for it illustrates how the discussion over global warming is light years ahead of the so-called "debate" occurring in the Rockies. Here are a couple of links, based on Andy's suggestion, you're sure to enjoy. [more]

SORRY PARD, LOOKS LIKE YOU DONE LANDED IN THE WRONG SIDNEY

Save for the fact that there are no kangaroos or koalas, no dingoes or oceans within say, a long, long way—and considering that it's winter here and summer there—it's still entirely possible that when German tourist Tobi Gutt stepped toward his puddle-jumping plane bound for Sidney, Montana this week rather than arriving in the civilized metropolis of the same name in Australia, he might have seen similarities between the Aussie outback and the badlands of the American high plains. But don't count on it.

"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," the 21-year-old Mr. Gutt told the German newspaper Bild. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."

According to a report from Reuters, this is how he almost arrived in Sidney rather than Sydney: "Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany Saturday for a four-week holiday. Instead of arriving 'down under', Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana. Gutt's airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney -- an oil town of about 5,000 people -- did he realize his mistake."

For more, read the Reuters story "Confused Tourist Lands In U.S., Not Australia." It's a hoot.

GALE NORTON IS BACK

Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company. Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
[more]

A SNAPSHOT IN TIME

While you are reading these words, I am putting our Montana backyard on ice. I've been out past midnight for a couple of weeks now trying to make peace with the natural elements and uneven contours of frozen sod in order to make a skating rink for the kids. I must say that it is starting to look sweet as it shines in the end-of-day sunlight.

What passes today as a modest extravagance in attempting to defy the gusts of warm Chinook winds that blow through in January and inevitably will turn this project into puddles is nothing compared to the epic struggle in the mountains between glaciers and the rising global thermostat.

Decades from now when the glaciers are memorialized in our oral tradition, the same way that Native Americans speak of free-ranging bison in their origin stories, what will our kids remember of winter? [more]

In the AVALANCHE ZONE

The tragic end for three climbers on Oregon's Mt. Hood has caused many serious alpine veterans in the Rockies, where winter mountaineering is a popular, cherished sport, to reflect on the risks of climbing, the need for proper seasonal preparedness, and the ever-present wild card of avalanche danger.

This week, New West caught up with Renny Jackson, who oversees the world-renowned team of elite climbing rangers in Grand Teton National Park. Over the years, Jackson has organized or been a part of several high-profile search and rescue efforts in the Tetons. The unique corps of public servants has, on several occasions, been awarded special recognition from the federal government for putting their own lives in danger to aid others. [more]

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