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4 days ago | 
billingsgazette.com | Sam Wilson
Luxury log homes sprouting up along the trail to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs? Real estate developments crowding in along the ski runs at Lost Trail and Lookout Pass ski areas? Probably unlikely, but the popular day-trip destinations for Missoula-area residents are among the public federal lands eligible to be sold under a proposal working through the U.S. Senate.
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1 week ago | 
helenair.com | Sam Wilson
More than blooming beargrass, RV traffic jams or the first wisps of wildfire smoke in the air, one of western Montana’s surest signs of summer is here: Going-to-the-Sun Road is now open to vehicle traffic, in all its 50 miles of scenic glory. Monday marked the official start of Glacier National Park’s busy season, when snowplowing wraps up on the highway’s upper elevations and visitors can drive across the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, between West Glacier and St. Mary.
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1 week ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
More than blooming beargrass, RV traffic jams or the first wisps of wildfire smoke in the air, one of western Montana’s surest signs of summer is here: Going-to-the-Sun Road is now open to vehicle traffic, in all its 50 miles of scenic glory. Monday marked the official start of Glacier National Park’s busy season, when snowplowing wraps up on the highway’s upper elevations and visitors can drive across the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, between West Glacier and St. Mary.
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1 week ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
Montana will largely stay the course on a controversial plan to gradually reduce the statewide mountain lion population by 40%, despite emphatic objections from cat hunters. The Fish and Wildlife Commission on Thursday voted to keep quotas enacted in 2023 largely in place, aside from minor tweaks in four hunting districts.
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1 week ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
Attorneys for environmental groups on Wednesday argued that federal agencies failed to consider the science and state-level regulations when they opted against returning gray wolves to protected status in the western United States.
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2 weeks ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
With fire season already underway in many western states, President Donald Trump on Thursday directed federal agencies to begin combining their wildland firefighting staff into a new, unified wildfire force. The executive order, similar to one floated by U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana shortly after the Republican took office this year, would place federal employees from five land management agencies in a newly created Federal Wildland Fire Service within the Department of Interior.
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2 weeks ago | 
bozemandailychronicle.com | Sam Wilson
The U.S. Forest Service has a new message for the roughly 1,400 employees it pressured to retire early despite their qualifications to help fight wildfires: Please come back. Among the more than 4,200 workers who took the federal agency’s early retirement offer, referred to as the “Deferred Resignation Program” or DRP, about one-third had red cards, meaning they were qualified to fight wildland fires.
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2 weeks ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
The U.S. Forest Service has a new message for the roughly 1,400 employees it pressured to retire early despite their qualifications to help fight wildfires: Please come back. Among the more than 4,200 workers who took the federal agency’s early retirement offer, referred to as the “Deferred Resignation Program” or DRP, about one-third had red cards, meaning they were qualified to fight wildland fires.
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2 weeks ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
At least two bears in Glacier National Park have recently shown an “increase in food-conditioned behavior,” according to park officials, resulting in one black bear being euthanized last week. The 4-year-old female black bear was killed June 5, according to a press release from park officials on Tuesday. The bear had made multiple attempts to access vehicles on private property within the park, and successfully entered at least one building and at least one vehicle.
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3 weeks ago | 
missoulian.com | Sam Wilson
Flathead Lake levels will likely fall short of the historic summer maximum this year thanks to dwindling moisture in the surrounding mountains, the operators of the dam that controls the lake predicted Thursday. Recent warm, dry conditions have decreased water supply in the Flathead River Basin, wrote a spokesman for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The tribes own Energy Keepers, the corporation that operates the Se̓liš Ksanka Qĺispe̓ (SKQ) Dam at the foot of the Flathead Lake.
