From today’s Missoulian . . .
Montana acreage ranks high on President Barack Obama’s wish list for 2013 landscape conservation initiatives, including possible additions to Glacier National Park, conservation easements in the Blackfoot Valley and the Rocky Mountain Front, and completion of the Montana Legacy Project.
“The fact this has risen to this level, with a White House conference last week, is really important,” said Greg Neudecker, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff member and vice chairman of the Blackfoot Challenge. “The president and secretary of Interior were very complimentary of what folks in the Crown of the Continent have been doing here. It’s great to see them latching on to community conservation.”
Ovando rancher Jim Stone visited with Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last Friday at the White House Conservation Conference in Washington, D.C. The meeting grew out of the president’s new America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, which kicked off last year in Ovando before going nationwide.