This week, Larry talks about the ongoing wolf hunt, Becky Hardy, the former — and much appreciated — North Fork mail lady and the last bit of road maintenance before the weather closed in.
Still no snow to aid hunters, but near neighbors have managed to harvest another white-tailed buck and two bull elk. Another neighbor managed to get one of the five cow elk tags available by drawing. He is still looking.
The quota for North Fork wolves is two, and I have not heard of any being taken…
A fairly decent overview by the Daily Inter Lake of the features and challenges of Sen. Baucus’ proposed Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act . . .
Sen. Max Baucus took a big step with his recent announcement to proceed with wilderness legislation for the Rocky Mountain Front, but the question is how many more steps will he be able to make in advancing it.
We’ve been to this show before – with wilderness proposals stretching back to late 1980s that were stalled for one reason or another. The devil is always in the details, and as specifics of the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage plan develop (it hasn’t been introduced yet) critics will begin to emerge and some may have worthy positions.
As envisioned now, the act would add 67,000 acres of new wilderness along the front, converting buffer lands outside the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex that are managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Larry puts his feet up and talks about this October on the North Fork . . .
Nearly everyone has already reported a slow start to the general hunting season, and that has been the case among North Fork residents, too.
Neighbor Lynn Ogle shot a nice white-tailed buck this week, and since I was with him, I don’t really feel skunked. That is the only legal kill I’m aware of.
Two white-tailed bucks were illegally killed on Trail Creek on private property. A license plate number was written down by another hunter and, if correct, the shooter may be arrested.
This week, Larry has some observations about the U.S. Forest Service bureaucracy . . .
As promised early in the summer, the Forest Service has rebuilt boat access sites at the Canada border and at Ford Ranger Station. Although it will be easier to launch at Ford due to the removal of the wooden terraces, I have mixed feelings about the new boat ramps…
The Forest Service is my favorite government agency. They have many excellent employees who are unable to do their best due to stupid regulations written in Washington, D.C. Mostly, they are no longer really involved in timber management but have been pushed into managing tourists. As a result, they make funny decisions which give columnists something to write about…
Here’s some pretty good commentary by Sarah Gilman of the High Country News concerning last Friday’s resurrection of the “roadless rule” . . .
One of the last decades’ most scintillating (that is, in the headachey confusing sense…) enviro-legal ping-pong matches may finally be drawing to a close. On Friday, a three-judge panel at the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver effectively reinstated the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which banned new road building and most logging on more than 50 million acres of National Forest. The rule was meant to prevent further fragmentation of wildlife habitat, sedimentation of streams, and other negative effects of roads on lands that had been previously inventoried as “roadless.”
Some well-chosen observations about hunting season in Larry Wilson’s column this week . . .
The fall colors are not at their peak yet, but close. The quaking aspen have turned bright yellow, and the leaves are beginning to fall, while the larch are half gold and half green.
Of course, bow hunting has been open for weeks, but camouflaged hunters with blackened faces aren’t very visible and their numbers are relatively small.
Gun season is different. Orange-clad hunters are everywhere – on foot, ATVs and pickups…
This week, Larry discusses the good news that funding has been approved for additional improvements to the North Fork Road and for additional efforts at weed control. On a more somber note, he also announces the passing of Bettie Jacobsen . . .
Not long ago, I was not very optimistic that the Resource Advisory Committee would grant money to all of Flathead County’s requests for road improvement projects. My pessimism was due in part to the fact that RAC projects had already provided funds for the North Fork Road stretching from Camas Junction nearly to Whale Creek…
I am pleased to announce that I was wrong again. Last week, RAC granted $25,350 for dust abatement on the North Fork Road in 2012…
On a sad note, word was received this week of the passing of Karen Feather’s sainted mother, Bettie Jacobsen…
Larry covers a lot of territory in this week’s column. There’s lots of good information on pending road improvement and weed control projects, as well as a brief discussion of a …uh… tourist traffic related issue.
I think almost all North Forkers have been pleased with the use of federal and Flathead County funds on the North Fork Road from Camas Junction to Polebridge.
That work, done with a 50 percent Resource Advisory Committee (RAC) grant and 50 percent county funds, has provided a smooth, virtually dust-free corridor on the section of the road that has the most traffic in the summer.
County maintenance on the paved portion from Home Ranch near Coal Creek to Hay Creek Bridge has also helped. The RAC grant was approved in 2009 and most work was completed in 2010. Additional dust abatement was approved in 2010 and applied in 2011 with county matching funds.
Also, a 2010 grant was approved for an additional eight miles of gravel mixed with bentonite binder to be applied from Polebridge north…
From the most recent Headwaters Montana newsletter . . .
When Gov. Schweitzer and BC Premier Gordon Campbell signed the historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the North Fork Flathead River in February 2010 Headwaters Montana heralded that event as an “historic breakthrough”. And indeed it was. But like all signed agreements, the MOU was only a beginning.
Unless fulfilled (i.e. made concrete with legislation and other actions) the MOU and the protections it promised could be lost for another generation to fight…
Edwin Fields of Headwaters Montana has a significant op-ed in this week’s Hungry Horse News that is of particular interest to North Fork residents . . .
It’s late summer in Montana and thousands of locals and visitors from around the world have streamed into Glacier National Park every day. Make that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. It’s an important distinction that illustrates just how special this place is.
Glacier Park is the U.S. side of the Peace Park. Waterton Lakes is on the Canadian side. But in 1932, the local Rotary Clubs of Kalispell and Cardston, Alberta, thought it would be a good idea to give the world its first International Peace Park. And after a lot of good-hearted work, they succeeded…
…Yet the case must again be made that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is not yet complete. Just look at a map…