New West Network

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From The New West Blog

The idea is that jobs are created by cleaning up the messes left by Montana's extractive industries, but this "restoration economy" -- championed by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and former Congressman Pat Williams of the think tank Western Progress -- needs a workforce.

An Oct. 2 Governor’s workshop at Montana Tech in Butte aims to begin filling the void. [more]

mccain vs. obama

Emboldened Democrats spent the summer eagerly looking West with the expectation of picking up electoral votes in the Rockies while skittish Republicans have fretted about losing what once was a reliably red region. In particular, Barack Obama's campaign has been courting voters in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico -- all states carried by George W. Bush in 2004. Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have campaigned extensively in the Rockies and -- perhaps most telling -- Democrats decided to stage their convention in Denver in an effort to reach out to the region's voters. But all this was before the Republican National Convention and the arrival of the much-loved and much-loathed Sarah Palin. An unpretentious Idaho native and the governor of the wildest of Western states, many assumed that she would crush the Democrats' Mountain West insurgency. Now that we have some distance from the conventions -- and before the debates commence -- it's a reasonable time to examine where the race stands in the Rockies. [more]

From The New West Blog

Outdoor magazine Field & Stream has posted interviews with presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, providing insights into their positions on conservation, energy exploration and gun rights.

While neither candidate hunts or owns a gun, both have been busy wooing those who do -- especially as the Rocky Mountain West has emerged as a battleground.

A cursory summary after the jump. [more]

From The New West Blog

Idaho congressmen are organizing a congressional delegation to push for the return of the Amtrak Pioneer passenger train that, from 1977 to 1997, ran through Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, as the Jackson Hole Star Tribune reports.

A bill to boost Amtrak funding cleared the U.S. Senate last year. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo included an amendment in the $11.4 billion bill that required Amtrak to study reinstating all or parts of the Pioneer route in the West. The House also approved a version of the bill, and now the two chambers need to reach a compromise.

Over the last couple days the Casper Star Tribune and the Idaho Statesman editorialized on the subject, taking decidedly different views. [more]

the economics of giving

As the economy flounders, charities often feel it most: donors tend to give less while more people find themselves in need of assistance.

“There is an ongoing fight with the cost of energy and food that people are struggling with,” said Ellie Hill, director of the Poverello Center in Missoula.

The center is receiving less donations than in the past year, while demand for its services has only increased, Hill said. The organization helps more people now than it ever has in the past 35 years, serving roughly 300 people a day with its hot meals and other services and housing 70 or more people at night, Hill said. [more]

From The New West Blog

Northern Rockies wolves were listed, then delisted, then relisted through a July injunction, and now that relisting will be more lasting -- at least until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service figures out how it can delist without endangering the species again.

The Idaho Statesman reports today on this latest twist in the wolf's roller-coaster ride: the federal government plans to withdraw its rule to lift endangered species protections for wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington. [more]

From The New West Blog

Here's video from Monday's gubernatorial debate in Missoula, during which Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer touted his energy record, job creation and investment in education; Republican candidate Roy Brown said he would bring property tax relief, eliminate the business equipment tax and develop Montana’s natural resources; and Libertarian Party nominee Stan Jones said he would get government out of the picture. Thanks to mtgop2008 for posting it to YouTube. [more]

From The New West Blog

That federal study of grizzly bear DNA in Montana criticized by Republican presidential candidate John McCain as pork barrel spending has been released, and it concludes that there are 765 bears in northwestern Montana, the largest population of grizzly bears documented there in more than 30 years, and a sign that the species could be at long last rebounding, the AP reports. [more]

headwaters summit

There is of course no better person to commence (and, it seemed, consecrate) a conference on the confluence of water resources and climate change than David James Duncan, the Lolo-based author of The River Why, River Teeth, and My Story as Told by Water, a self-described small-scale activist who, as he wrote in My Stories, "has waded the flow of hundreds of wild streams, held thousands of trout and salmon in (his) hands, watched a million silver rises."

Keynoting the Headwaters Summit that's continuing over the next two days in Missoula, near the largest river restoration project in the world, Duncan said, "True restoration is a slow, careful, reciprocal conversation with nature." [more]

city club missoula

Locally produced food needs more support and a greater infrastructure to achieve lower prices, a panel of speakers said at City Club Missoula’s forum in the Doubletree Hotel on Monday.

“I think we are rapidly approaching peak prices for everything,” said panelist Josh Slotnick.

Slotnick cited different reasons for increasing food costs, including the high cost of fuel to transport food and even the influence of natural disasters such as Hurricane Ike. Ultimately, the need for more locally grown food comes from global pressures, Slotnick said. [more]

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