GUEST COMMENTARY

President Obama isn’t the first American President to win the Nobel Peace Prize.  The first President, as well as the first American, to receive that coveted honor was a one-time member of the Montana Stock Grower’s Association. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first and only future President to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Roosevelt was awarded the peace prize for successfully mediating the end to the bloody Russo–Japanese War. He received the Medal of Honor for leading his Rough Rider’s in their hell-for-leather assault on San Juan Hill.

In my opinion Theodore Roosevelt (he disliked the moniker “Teddy”) was the most remarkable American who ever lived.  His portrait has been on my office wall for three decades. I have over 60 volumes by him or about him.

LET'S GET OVER THE BIG PISTOL SYNDROME

General big game hunting seasons are opening soon, and legions of stealthy hunters will be silently stalking around grizzly country in pre-dawn darkness, but only after they’ve sprayed themselves with human scent blocker, “buck scent” or stale elk pee. As sure as the seasons will open, some of them will have a close encounter with a grizzly, often resulting in a dead bear.

Much has been written about this subject. Every wildlife expert out there has encouraged hunters to carry bear pepper spray instead of a big handgun for self-defense, but clearly, a lot of hunters ignore this advice, even though it’s all for their own safety and the future of hunting.

Whither the Salmon?

I stand on the rocky shore of Jensen Point near a beached snag, the cold salt water of Quartermaster Harbor lapping at my ankles. The point, which divides inner and outer Qurtermaster Harbor, is the site of a Vashon Island park. People launch kayaks, rowing shells, canoes, motorboats here. Swimmers start the Heart of the Sound Triathlon here, too. Swimming out into the deeper water of the channel, virtually all of us wear wetsuits. I once ran into a young woman wearing a Heart of the Sound Triathlon T-shirt and made a casual comment about the race. I’m never doing that again, she said. That water is so cold!

Be that as it may, people have been coming to Jensen Point for centuries. In 1996, archaeologist Julie Stein, now director of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, led a dig here into a shell midden that has been carbon dated at up to 1,000 years old. Across the harbor, to the south, you can see sailboat masts at another park and marina; it’s all very bucolic, but a century ago you might have seen masts clustered there around a big floating dry dock, Puget Sound’s first, which opened in 1892. There was already a shipway on the site when the dock arrived, and a big mill nearby. People built and repaired boats along that curve of shore into the 1920s. Right after World War I, the Martinolich yard launched a vessel 250 feet long. In 1929, the yard launched the fishing vessel Janet G., from which a local family seined Alaska salmon for generations. 

Missoula Notebook

I was curious about the potential effects of Sen. Tester’s act on businesses like Sun Mountain, so—after touring the sawmill—I interviewed Tony Colter, the company’s plant manager and vice president. He told me that Sun Mountain’s mill and logging operations combined could potentially employ up to 300 people, but times have been tough lately. Today, only 120 people work in the mill and finger-joint plant, and about 50 people work in logging. Sun Mountain hopes Tester’s bill could help turn things around.

Missoula Notebook

Senator Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would protect 600,000 acres of Montana wilderness, but it would also mandate the logging of 10,000 acres per year in Montana’s national forests. Several mainstream environmental organizations, such as Trout Unlimited, the Montana Wilderness Association, and the National Wildlife Federation, have joined with recreation interests and local logging companies in support of the bill. Meanwhile, other environmental organizations, such as Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Wild West Institute, find themselves agreeing with many motorized access advocates that this bill is a bad idea.

I recently sat down with Tom Reed, the Montana/Wyoming backcountry organizer for Trout Unlimited, to get his response to some of the main objections raised by the bill’s critics.

To the casual observer, the upper Big Hole River valley is just another classic Western landscape with postcard-worthy vistas and comforting desolation.  But in this high-altitude river, the struggle of an imperiled fish is playing out.

In this valley, time has stood relatively still, with the terrain intact just as it was 50 years ago. The river, however, is changing. It is home to the last native population of fluvial (river-dwelling) Arctic grayling in the Lower 48, and the fish has been in steady decline since it was described more than 25 years ago by nature writer David Quammen as “under certain specific conditions, the most exquisitely colorful bit of living matter to be found in the state of Montana.”

Missoula Notebook

If passed, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would designate the first new Wilderness Areas in Montana since 1983, and I’m up here, in a plane provided by the non-profit Ecoflight, to get a first-hand look at what the bill would actually mean to miles of backcountry in some of the most cherished wilderness in the state. Down below me is the battle zone: forests and landscapes treasured by hikers, loggers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horse packers, anglers, hunters, and oil and gas firms, among others. The Tester bill aims to protect wild land while satisfying as many of these groups as possible. But can it succeed?

Wildlife

When grizzly bears were removed from Endangered Species Act protections in 2007, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition sued in federal court, and on Monday, they won.

“But the biggest winner is the grizzly bear, an iconic symbol of Greater Yellowstone’s power and beauty,” says a press statement from the Coalition.

The decision, handed down by Judge Donald W. Molloy in Montana district court, finds that, among other reasons, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not adequately consider the impacts of global warming and other factors on whitebark pine nuts, a key grizzly bear food source:  “There is a disconnect between the studies the agency relied on here and its conclusions.”

Guest Column

Three of Montana’s conservation groups recently sponsored a showing of the new Greenfire documentary “Lords of Nature” at the Roxy, followed by a two-hour panel discussion that included Montana’s Wolf Coordinator, Carolyn Sime. The evening served to put in perspective the current controversy over the wolf hunt in Montana and Idaho, which was the subject of a court hearing just a few days earlier. 

As the Montana Director for the Western Watersheds Project, one of the plaintiffs in that suit, it seems to me that this element of perspective is sorely lacking from Montana’s plans to manage wolves, though I certainly appreciated the recent comments from Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Commissioner Ron Moody in NewWest.  While I am doing my best to keep an open mind on this subject, and appreciate the role sportsmen continue to play in wildlife conservation, I am puzzled by the seeming unwillingness of Montana to look to Minnesota for guidance on this critical issue.

Minnesota is about half the size of Montana, with a population of over 5 million people, and currently has three times as many wolves.  It has almost as many hunters as our entire population (half a million), and derives 3.6 times as much income from livestock as we do. The North Star state also has a lot more experience dealing with wolves than we do, as their wolves were never exterminated.  The contrast in attitudes between Minnesota’s hunters, ranchers, and wolf managers and our own is striking.

Missoula's Coming Attraction

The U.S. Forest Service has been around for 104 years, said a bevy of speakers who gathered today under blue skies on a stubbled field in Missoula. And as important as the USFS has been all that time, it’s never been honored with a museum. “Why is that?” one of the day’s dignitaries asked audience members munching sandwiches under a tent.

Missoula Mayor John Engen had an answer.

“You actually have to let your stuff get old before you can have a museum,” he told the crowd, to applause and laughter.

It seems the USFS and its stuff are plenty old enough to deserve what they’re finally getting: a museum that honors the legacy, hard lessons and achievements of one of the nation’s most important agencies. The end result will be the National Museum of Forest Service History (NMFSH), a $12 million, 300,000-square-foot, energy-efficient building in Missoula with a theater, research and meeting rooms, exhibits, education center, a collection of some 40,000 artifacts, and more.