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New West News Brief

With more than half of the Yellowstone National Park bison population removed this season due to slaughter, winter weather and hunting, the Interagency Bison Management has halted all additional deaths and are holding 255 cows and calves until the grass greens.

Meanwhile, an estimated 600,000 pounds of meat from the slaughtered 1,700 bison is currently being distributed to Montana tribes and food banks, reports the Billings Gazette. An additional 700 are estimated dead due to weather.

The Montana Food Bank network recently purchased 15,000 pounds of bison meat that will be distributed to 189 banks throughout the state, perfect timing with the February recall of 143 million pounds of Californian beef. [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]

NewWest.Net Conferences

The Designing the New West: Architecture and Landscape in the Mountain West Conference is wrapping up here in Bozeman at the historic Gallatin Gateway Inn. Put on by NewWest.Net and sponsored by the Sonoran Institute, the conference brought together designers from all over the country to explore innovative design ideas, identify best practices, and better understand how to bridge the gap between good architectural theory and sometimes-messy building practices in the fastest growing region in the nation.

A mix of presentations and engaging panel discussions tackled pressing Western issues like sustainable development, land design and the special challenges of urban, rural and resort design, historic preservation and affordable housing.

Click on the photo or here for a slideshow of the days' events. Click "more" for a recap of the conference. [more]

the abcs of h20

In Montana, and throughout the Intermountain West, water law affects every part of our lives and communities.

Priority dates dictate the volume and distribution of water from wells and streams. Landowners must put the water to beneficial use without waste to retain their right to use the State’s water. News articles about water issues illustrate that many people are confused about Montana’s water laws, even landowners and local officials.

Here are the key points to understand the basics of Montana water law.
[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]

Western Book Roundup

Just in time for Earth Day, several Boulder authors have released ecologically minded books. Read on to learn about Disappearing Destinations, Go Green, Live Rich, and The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw.

Disappearing Destinations: 37 Places in Peril and What Can Be Done to Help Save Them
Vintage, 400 pages, $15.95

Former NewWest contributor and Boulder resident Heather Hansen co-authored this book with Kimberly Lisagor. Disappearing Destinations documents the environmental problems at popular tourist sites around the world. Publishers Weekly calls it a "fact-packed survey of travel destinations endangered by global warming, environmental degradation, predatory logging, mining and fishing and the impact of too many tourists… The authors' accounts of how the world's beauty is being despoiled, based on sharp on-site reporting, are a cautionary call to arms for tourists to fight environmental excesses and, when traveling, to tread lightly." In an email, Hansen noted that the book includes regionally-relevant chapters on " Glacier National Park, Yellowstone and the Cascades."

Heather Hansen will discuss the book at the Boulder Book Store tonight (April 22, 7:30 p.m.) and at the Tattered Cover in LoDo on May 28 (7:30 p.m.). [more]

Hillary doesn't listen anyway

I’m much too worried about the Idaho fruit crop to fret over Tuesday’s presidential primary in Pennsylvania.

It’s my next-door neighbor’s fault. She’s related to a Very Important Idaho Political-and-Fruit-Growing Family with operations at Sunny Slope in Canyon County, just west of Boise. I’m fond of my neighbor. We met yesterday on a dog walk, and while her nice small dog stood still and my let’s-get-going retriever tried to yoink my brain out my ears, she told me that the peaches on the family ranch had bloomed a week or so ago, and the whole crop was threatened. Sure enough, freezing weather came along last night and there’s more predicted for tonight.

Suddenly, I am next-door neighbor to an entire fruit ranch. I’ve eaten those yummy peaches. I am invested. I am part of the chain. [more]

A Little More Room to Breathe

For the first time in a decade, wild bison will be allowed to legally roam outside of Yellowstone National Park.

The purchase of the cattle grazing rights from the Church Universal and Triumphant’s Royal Teton Ranch will provide an approximate 5,000-acre “zone” where bison can roam outside of the park boundary while having little-to-no risk of possible interaction and transmission of brucellosis to Montana’s cattle.

Although too small in landmass to provide the title “Free-ranging Yellowstone bison," the range is released through a pact agreement and collaboration between three federal agencies, two Montana agencies, one private landowner and a coalition of four non-profit organizations.
[more]

"a secret, closed-door plan"?

Elected officials are raising red flags after finding out about alleged back-room negotiations between the U.S. Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co. aimed at easing Plum Creek's transition into residential real estate by amending road use regulations.

Last Thursday, the Missoula Board of County Commissioners wrote Montana Sen. Jon Tester an open letter alerting him of private dialogue on forest road easements that could, they said, significantly affect communities in Western Montana where Plum Creek owns large swaths of land.

According to Plum Creek spokeswoman Kathy Budinick, Plum Creek has not acted deceitfully.

"It has been characterized as a process that occurred behind closed doors and that is inaccurate, and in fact, just the opposite is true," said Budinick. "The easement amendment was heavily vetted really at all stages of its drafting." [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]

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