AUGUSTA, Mont. – Locals call it “the Front,” a name that conjures up a battleline between armies. But for now, the fight is over between environmentalists who want to protect the wildlife that flourishes here, and oil and gas executives who want to drill for up to 3.6 trillion cubic-feet of natural gas that may […]
Mark Matthews
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Heavy metals move
Heavy metals accumulated from 100 years of mining in Idaho’s Silver Valley (HCN, 11/25/96) are spreading into Washington state, and environmentalists and state officials there want a say in how to stop it. “Just having Idaho control the cleanup doesn’t hold any promise,” said Michele Nanni of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council. Last year, […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Wet summer a bust for firefighters
MISSOULA, Mont. – Across the West it’s been a good year for rain and a bad one for firefighters. Heavy snows, spring rains and little dry lightning have made this fire season a bust so far. In the Northern Rockies area, the Forest Service says 1,052 fires had burned less than 10,000 acres by Aug. […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
The buffalo underground: Now it can be told
WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. – Shortly after last New Year’s Day, Vickie Dyar’s cat started acting strangely. When the gift-store owner stepped into the frigid air to investigate, she saw deep tracks leading through the deep snow toward a small barn near the house. As Dyar walked toward the barn, a bison, its magnificent black head […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Prairie dogs tunnel their way to a military stalemate
HELENA, Mont. – The Montana Army National Guard has stood ready when called upon to fight any foe. Then it met the prairie dog. The rodents, known for their intricate tunneling, have expanded their stronghold here at Fort Harrison, threatening underground power lines and communications systems. The guard would like to take action, but it’s […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
The importance of prairie dogs
A report, Conserving Prairie Dog Ecosystems on the Northern Plains, defends one of nature’s best dinners. Published by the Predator Project in Bozeman, Mont., the 30-page booklet explains how prairie dogs create a unique environment that provides food and shelter to at least 158 other species, including the endangered black-footed ferret and the swift fox. […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
We’d rather have weeds, Missoulians say
MISSOULA, Mont. – This city’s Mount Sentinel seems an unlikely place for an environmental battle. Not a grand mountain by Western standards, it’s a stoop-shouldered hill that bears the University of Montana’s “M”. It is covered mostly by open meadows, and, like much grazing land in western Montana, it is infested with weeds alien to […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Agency ordered to study trout – again
The beleaguered bull trout has been given another chance to make the endangered species list. U.S. District Judge Robert Jones ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review its 1994 decision that the fish doesn’t warrant immediate protection because other species have more pressing needs. Jones called parts of the Fish and Wildlife Service […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Ted Turner makes a deal
Thanks to a land swap, Montana commoners will no longer be able to hunt, fish or hike on state lands nestled deep within the private kingdom of media mogul Ted Turner and his wife, Jane Fonda. Turner didn’t like uninvited guests invading the Flying D Ranch southwest of Bozeman, Mont., so he offered the state […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
River cleanup is slow, expensive and maybe hopeless
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. CANYON CREEK, Idaho – Thick mud gushes beneath Marti Calabretta’s high rubber boots as she walks from her office, a much-used house trailer, to the dirty pickup truck. The raw landscape looks like a construction site before the pouring of a foundation, but Calabretta […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Sacred lands shouldn’t smell
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1994, the Coeur d’Alene tribe spent $200,000 to remove 1,000 tons of lead-contaminated soil from a riverside area long used by the tribe. But when the tribe wanted to construct a levee on private land to protect the site from floods, the other […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Logging, floods push metals downstream
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Heavy metals don’t recognize state boundaries. That’s why some people in Spokane, Wash., 30 miles downstream from Lake Coeur d’Alene, are worried. “The metals are coming this way, and we hope to slow them down so they don’t also poison the Columbia River Basin,” […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
‘Nobody gives a damn about the prairie dog’
The dirt two-track rises quickly from the river to a ridge of pines. After a few miles the track veers out onto the sagebrush flats of this high desert plain in Montana, and there, on a patch of ground where grass and sage thin out, I spot what I have come looking for: small mounds […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
A rodent that can outlast a camel in the desert
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to as essay, “‘Nobody gives a damn about the prairie dog’.” It was a quote from naturalist J.R. Mead in 1859 that got University of Montana zoology professor Bert Pfeiffer curious about prairie dogs. Mead wrote: “Not a drop (of water) […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Forest chief resigns
Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas will be teaching wildlife biology instead of administering the nation’s forests next winter. Thomas announced in October his retirement from the Forest Service; he plans to accept an endowed professorship at the University of Montana in Missoula. Thomas refused to comment on the political intrigue that has ruled the […]
Posted inOctober 14, 1996: Greens prune their message to win the West's voters
Desperate wolves
Four wolves in Montana’s Sawtooth pack that were shot in September for killing livestock may have been starving and frantic to feed their 14 pups. All the wolves had badly maimed paws, says Bob Ream, a biologist at the University of Montana. “The federal trapper who shot the wolves told me that three of four […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
It ain’t over till it’s over
When President Clinton announced a $65 million land swap with Crown Butte Resources Inc. to stop development of a gold mine on the boundary of Yellowstone National Park, it sounded like a done deal. But federal officials have only six months to come up with property that Crown Butte must agree to accept; if not, […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Snail’s trail leads to Yellowstone
Wolves and exotic lake trout aren’t the only new denizens of Yellowstone National Park. New Zealand mudsnails, as tiny as BBs and as prolific as fruit flies, have rapidly spread throughout the park’s upper Madison River. Although trout eat the snails, they pass through the fish undigested and alive, and reproduce so quickly that they […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
All is not quiet on the Front
Though oil and gas developers have long had their eyes on the vast reserves that geologists say lie beneath Montana’s rugged Rocky Mountain Front, environmental concerns have held most of them at bay. Now, a more immediate threat looms over the area. Wyoming businessman Mark Alldredge has filed 104 mining claims over 3.4 square miles […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
Montana grizzlies move west
For a decade, Montanans have complained about the influx of Californians. The trend has reversed, at least for three grizzlies. A sow and her two 16-month-old cubs had run into trouble by repeatedly raiding garbage cans and cabins just outside Yellowstone National Park. Even after land managers relocated the family, the grizzlies returned to their […]