From the Saturday, September 10, 2005 online edition of the Missoulian . . .
The farther north Canadian coal mining proposals reach - that is, the more distant they become from the Montana border - the more Clint Muhlfeld worries.
"We know that our bull trout use the upper portion of the watershed," Muhlfeld said. "It's critical habitat, and the higher these proposals reach into those headwaters, the greater the impact on a fish that's already on the brink of extinction."
Muhlfeld is a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; south of the border, his job is to protect and recover endangered bull trout.
But north of the border, where many of those bull trout spawn and rear and migrate seasonally, the waterways they call home flow over deposits of gold, coal, oil and gas, rich resources British Columbia's government is keen to develop.
Much of Muhlfeld's research has been conducted in the North Fork Flathead River, which forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park before joining the South and Middle forks to flow into Flathead Lake.
The North Fork is a prime bull trout system, Muhlfeld said, and its Canadian headwaters are no exception. In fact, more than half the North Fork's bull trout travel north of the border to spawn.
The Canadian Flathead has long promised a natural resource bonanza, and proposals to mine coal and gold, to drill for oil and gas, have been active for decades. Equally active has been the outcry from south of the border, where downstream residents in Montana see nothing to gain and everything to lose from provincial development.
Read the entire article . . .