My Page: Courtney Lowery

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Special blog

Ten days ago eight students and their instructors pedaled away from Billings, Montana to begin a four-week, 700-mile cycling expedition to explore the state, its opportunities for producing clean energy, and the impacts of climate change.

Now in its fourth year, the annual course “Cycle the Rockies: Energy and Climate Change in Montana,” will make its way across the state ending in Glacier National Park.  Along the way, students will tour a range of energy production sites, learn from a diversity of state, industry and environmental experts, and meet with local Montanans concerned with the impacts of climate change and energy sustainability on their communities.

Every ten days New West will be publishing the students’ writings and photographs from the road. This is the first installment.

From the Flathead Beacon

WEST GLACIER – Exactly one century after President William Howard Taft signed the legislation creating Glacier National Park, nearly 1,000 Montanans gathered here on May 11 to celebrate a landscape they love, along with the wisdom and stewardship of the generations who helped preserve it.

“Today, we recognize this anniversary, acknowledging that the story of this landscape is much older than a mere hundred years, and that the story will continue well beyond this significant event,” Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright told the crowd gathered beneath a tent outside the West Glacier Community Building. “Each of us has a personal connection with Glacier National Park – Glacier connects us to the very core of our nature.”

From the Flathead Beacon

Aug. 13, 1967, marked one of the most tragic and important events in the history of Glacier National Park. Two women, in campsites miles apart from one another, were mauled and killed by grizzly bears, the first bear-related fatalities since the park’s inaugural year.

It is known as “Night of the Grizzlies,” a story with enough gravity to grab national headlines and cause the national park system to re-examine wildlife policies. It was also an incident forever burned into the hearts and minds of those involved, as well as the park’s widespread community.

MontanaPBS is revisiting the story with the documentary, “Glacier Park’s Night of the Grizzlies,” set to debut on May 17. While the story may be familiar to many Montanans, some of the voices in the film have never been publicly heard before, said co-producer Gus Chambers.

News Nugget

When Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced late last month a “sea change” at the department that would give biking and walking the same economic treatment as driving, he set off a storm of kudos from the alternative transportation community, but also an equally vehement response, a negative one, from parts of the business and automobile communities.

It started when La Hood gave this address at the National Bike Summit (link opens YouTube video) then the department actually released a policy that stated, among other things, “The establishment of well-connected walking and bicycling networks is an important component for livable communities, and their design should be a part of Federal-aid project developments.”

On his blog, LaHood put it this way: “Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

Today, LaHood again defends this position in a Q&A with the New York Times, by saying this is not a top-down directive—it’s a policy that has bubbled up from the American people themselves. 

News Nugget

National Geographic this week launches a new TV channel of 24/7 nature programming and one of the first programs to be featured is centered on the Yellowstone Grizzly.

Expedition Wild: Expedition Grizzlies follows naturalist Casey Anderson as he documents the in-peril Yellowstone grizzly population and tries to teach an orphan grizzly how to be a real bear.

Here’s a sneak peek from Hulu:

What’s really cool is Expedition Wild is produced in Montana by Montanans who know Yellowstone and its bears, Bozeman-based Grizzly Creek Films.

According to a story in the Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic hopes “Nat Geo WILD” will replace the Fox Reality Channel in some 50 million homes across the United States. We can only hope. Something tells me we might all be better off if 50 million homes opt for studying nature over studying the “Househusbands of Hollywood.”

News Nugget

Water is indeed for fighting in the West. But, the fight is no longer just about who gets to use the water, it’s also about who gets access to the water.

This week, the issue is playing out, in very different ways in the legislatures of Colorado and Utah. Montana is perhaps the most famous Western state when it comes to stream access—with one of the strongest stream access laws in the country (strong in that it protects the public’s right to access) but also some of the most high-profile battles over it. (See some of New West’s coverage of the issue here, here and here.)

But, Utah and Colorado might be working to replace Montana as the West’s steam access battle ground.

In Utah, the legislature recently passed a bill that would drastically restrict public access to waterways that run through private land. This comes after a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that opened those waterways to the public. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, “HB141 allows anglers and others to wade in public waters crossing private lands only if there is an established 10-year pattern of public use there.”

Meanwhile, the debate seems to be going the other way in Colorado.

“From Above,” by Charles Uibel. See more of Charles’ work at www.greatsaltlakephotos.com

“Snow Crystals Through Elk Fence,” by Alix King. See more of Alix’s work here.

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.

“Fine Waterfowl Water” by Charles Uibel. See more of Charles’ work at GreatSaltLakePhotos.com

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