TIME TO MOVE ON

Here’s something that isn’t news to anybody. The number of guns Americans own has skyrocketed, but how is this significant?

An incredible--and later proven unfounded--paranoia swept the country starting back in 2008 when it started to look like a perceived anti-gunner, Barack Obama, might become Commander-in-Chief. The rest of the economy tanked, but thanks to Obama, the gun industry flourished and had its best three-year run ever. Firearms manufacturers worked three shifts per day and still couldn’t make enough guns, especially handguns, to meet demand. Not only has the number of handguns owned by private citizens at least doubled, to more than 100 million handguns, about one handgun for every two adults, but sales of long guns and shotguns has also soared. Americans now own at least 250 million guns, more than one per adult, including at least 20 million firearms gun control advocates might call “assault weapons.” The number of privately owned firearms continues to go up by at least 4 million per year, and interestingly, many new handgun buyers are women. 

COULD IT ALL HAVE BEEN OVER ON SEPTEMBER 30?

The founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW), a multi-state conservation group that has been aggressively pushing for a congressional resolution to the wolf delisting controversy, claims Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both Democrats, are not his allies.

Instead, he insists, both the Montana Senators worked behind the scenes to actually derail delisting efforts at the same time they were jointly introducing a bill to delist the wolf.

No, I’m not making it up.

THEY PUSHED TOO HARD, TOO LONG

Everybody who even remotely follows the wolf issue knows how bad it is, politically. About the only way it could get worse would be a wolf breaking into an urban backyard and biting a child.

Federal District Judge Donald Molloy’s August 5 ruling putting the Big Dog back on the endangered species list and stopping hunts in Idaho and Montana was that proverbial last straw for a lot of people, even a lot of fence sitters who actually like wolves and supported the reintroduction.

THE MONTANA BEER BEAT

As you may remember, the Montana Department of Revenue (DOR) created a little uprising among Montana brewers and craft beer fans last year by issuing--and then rescinding as controversy erupted--a proposed administrative rule that would’ve forced brewers to close instead of stop selling beer at precisely 8 pm. (If interested in the details on how that controversy turned out, click here.)

Welcome to the sequel, sort of. 

LET'S BE FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS INSTEAD

Today, I’ve decided to abandon my normal manner of being diplomatic and gentle and say something that needs saying without sugarcoating, so here goes.

Just in case you haven’t traveled around Europe, here’s how it works. You can, for example, fly into Spain, rent a car and drive over to France. And guess what happens when you get to the border?

Absolutely nothing! 

Health Care

Though the visit this week by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Libby was brief, it is possible she gained some insights into what residents here want and need – and how those forces are opposed in some ways.

Libby residents at the public meeting, held by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., expressed a need for more help to deal with the asbestos-related diseases many community members are suffering from, yet they also wish to transcend the town’s reputation as site of the worst public health disaster in the U.S. to encourage jobs and growth.

They touted the increasing number of patients receiving care through the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, yet one patient told Baucus and Sebelius the clinic’s services were being stretched such that he no longer received the attention he used to.

And while some Libby residents thanked Sebelius and Baucus for the health care reform law that passed last year and extended Medicare coverage to those sickened by asbestos, others questioned whether the changes to America’s health care system were Constitutional.

GUEST COMMENTARY

Whether or not you care about the recovery of grizzly bears, we face a serious challenge today of how to protect the safety of people who live and recreate in grizzly country, as whitebark pine, the driver of the health of the population for Yellowstone grizzly bear population, continues to suffer from a climate-driven beetle epidemic. At this critical juncture, it has been confusing and unconstructive to see grizzly bear management agencies flip-flop on the fundamental question of whether or not whitebark pine matters to the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, and the effects of its loss on human-bear conflicts.

Interstate Relations

Beginning next summer the state of Montana plans to haul thousands of tons of contaminated mine tailings from an abandoned Cooke City gold mine over Wyoming’s Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, a fragile, 47-mile, two-lane mountain route to Yellowstone and one of the state’s most popular tourist byways.

The project to remove 68,000 to 148,000 tons of toxic material overland from the McLaren mill tailings site on the outskirts of Cooke City 318 miles to a smelter in Whitehall, MT, near Butte also includes reprocessing the tailings to harvest residual gold. Montana officials claim that even at currently high gold prices of more than $1,100 an ounce, the revenue from the recovered gold will barely cover the hauling costs.

But the hauling scheme has some high-level political allure in the Treasure State. The project was celebrated in a June 2 Montana agency press release as “good as gold” and an “example of [Montana] Gov. [Brian] Schweitzer’s restoration economy and a demonstration of Montana ingenuity at its best.”

But in northwest Wyoming, the McLaren mill clean-up proposal is not so glittery, evocative of previous borderland mine and mine cleanup skirmishes reflected in the once-popular bumper sticker: “Montana Gets the Gold, Wyoming Gets the Shaft.”

IS ANYBODY SURPRISED?

If anybody is surprised U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy put the gray wolf back on the endangered species list and stopped wolf hunting in Idaho and Montana, he or she hasn’t been following the debate. I’m sure not surprised, but his decision, released Aug. 5, puts the spotlight back on a lot interesting issues.

Here are my thoughts on the next chapter of the biggest outdoor story of the century.

WILL IDAHO AND MONTANA BE LEFT OUT?

With the severe escalation of partisan politics and divisiveness in recent years, it has become basically impossible to pass a Wilderness bill or any other type of public lands or outdoor recreation legislation on its own. Time on the Senate and House floor is so scarce and closely guarded and partisanship so bitter that the only way public lands legislation has any realistic chance is a relatively new invention called the omnibus bill.

As you may remember, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed S. 22, a massive public lands omnibus bill on March 30, 2009 after a long, heated debate and lots of last-minute maneuvering. The 1,300-page bill was the combination of 170 pieces of legislation creating new national parks and monuments, plus park expansions and national recreation trails, protecting hundreds of miles of wild and scenic rivers, and designating more than 2 million acres of Wilderness.