On the second day of July in 2011, I walked down to my hay fields to see if the Yellowstone River had flooded its banks. It had — but so had crude oil leaking from Exxon’s Silvertip Pipeline, which runs underneath the river upstream from my farm south of Billings, Montana. That was the beginning […]
Montana
Posted inArticles
Perseverance pays off for the Rocky Mountain Front
A 37-year crusade ends in new protections
Posted inArticles
Montana mycologist fights fungus with fungus
To save whitebark pines, apply slippery jack.
Posted inDecember 8, 2014: The Great Salmon Compromise
Have returning wolves really saved Yellowstone?
Researchers fear that some damage can’t be undone.
Posted inArticles
Killing wolves to protect cattle may backfire
A new study raises questions about how to handle livestock conflicts.
Posted inNovember 24, 2014: Transportation Transformation
Latest: Bison transferred to Fort Peck Indian Reservation
Disease-free animals from Yellowstone get a new home.
Posted inArticles
Landscape-scale conservation gains ground
The Nature Conservancy just announced its largest Washington land purchase to date.
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
Latest: Montana judge rules groups of wells illegal
“Exempt well” laws in most Western states allow domestic wells to be drilled without water rights.
Posted inArticles
Fur flies over Montana bobcat farm
Will animal rights activists keep a bobcat farmer from setting up shop in Montana?
Posted inArticles
Want a trophy buck? Ditch the camo and get a guide
Study looks at successful types of big game hunters
Posted inGoat
Closure of federal sheep facility would be a victory for grizzlies
On the last day of August, 2012, a collared grizzly bear dubbed 726 by federal wildlife biologists vanished into the rugged Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. A few weeks later, they recovered his collar near an established campsite. It appeared to have been cut, stoking suspicions that hunters may have shot the bear, a […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The roads scholar
An ecologist helps wildlife safely cross highways.
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
Climate changes for wolverine listing
What good can the Endangered Species Act do in a warming world?
Posted inWotr
The battle for women’s suffrage continues
In Montana, no woman has held federal office since 1916, when Montanans elected their first and only female Congressional representative.
Posted inWotr
Our reliance on drones to patrol the borders
When I think of Canada, I picture caribou herds, universal healthcare and the occasional hockey brawl. Officials at our Department of Homeland Security, however, seem to think the neighbors up North pose a serious security threat. After all, the department has spent the last five years quietly building a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles — […]
Posted inGoat
The West’s crucial 2014 U.S. Senate races
The big question of the 2014 midterm elections — other than, “Eric Cantor lost?!” — is which party will emerge with control of the U.S. Senate. A number of Western states will host Senate races this year – Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Alaska – but only three will be hotly contested, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann by Joe Ashbrook Nickell
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann Joe Ashbrook Nickell, 140 pages, hardcover: $45. Missoula Art Museum In Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann, author Joe Ashbrook Nickell provides a glimpse into the psyche of a 95-year-old artist still grappling with his place in the world. Tension is palpable in the oeuvre of this […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Backcountry memoir
Yellowstone Has TeethMarjane Ambler223 pages, $16.95.Riverbend Publishing, 2013. Cindy Mernin puts it bluntly: “Paradise isn’t for sissies!” she says, recalling the 14 years she spent as a ranger’s wife at Yellowstone National Park. In particular, as she tells author Marjane Ambler, the winters weren’t for sissies. The couple had moved there in the early 1970s, […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
A bear named Irene
Grizzlies make a tenuous comeback in Montana’s Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Native American tourism quietly thrives
Even the customers seem to emerge from thin air.