The public now has extra time to make their views known about the proposed Rock Creek Mine . . .
The U.S. Forest Service has extended the comment period for the draft environmental impact statement for the Rock Creek Mine project near Noxon.
Residents will now have until April 19 to submit comments on the proposed copper and silver project. Kootenai National Forest officials said in a press release announcing the extension that they wanted to give people more time to review the draft supplemental environmental impact because it is a “complex document.”
The draft study released in February addresses concerns about sediment control and ground water at Rock Creek.
The public is invited to the annual Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex (BMWC) Public Meeting on Saturday, April 2 starting at 10 AM at the Stage Stop Inn in Choteau, Montana.
“This is a great annual opportunity to meet with the National Forest Wilderness Managers and Montana Fish and Wildlife staff”, says Deb Mucklow, Spotted Bear District Ranger. “The challenges of managing wilderness are often not understood. Historically the participants at this annual meeting have helped with solutions or ideas that we as managers may be to incorporate. Specific updates will be shared from the Fire Season of 2015, the Wilderness Stewardship Performance program, and specific trail needs/projects, wilderness issues and more.” All of the participants will be encouraged to interact with the managers present and have time for one on one questions. We’ll also be asking how they value the wilderness we have today and what the expectations are for the future. In addition, updates will be provided on specific activities and projects, and ongoing monitoring across the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. The monitoring and actions are a piece of the Limits of Acceptable change for the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex (BMWC).”
Oil and gas development at Colorado’s Roan Plateau. Photo by Ecoflight.
Conservation groups are leaning on the feds over the need to control methane emissions as part of energy development . . .
Environmental groups and the U.S. government reached a tentative agreement to end a dispute over greenhouse gas emissions from federal oil and gas leases in Montana.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice and the environmentalists filed notice in federal court Friday that they have a settlement in principle over a lawsuit that pushes the government to examine the effects on climate change when leasing public lands for energy drilling. They hope to finalize the deal within the month.
The groups say the government should require companies to use technology that would reduce climate-changing methane emissions as a condition of their leases. Better oversight and technology use could cut 40 percent of the methane now lost due to leaking pipes, venting excess gas and exhaust from drilling, processing and transporting the oil and gas, according to the Montana Environmental Information Center, WildEarth Guardians and Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project.
A new ruling protecting bighorn sheep, although it has no immediate impact on the North Fork, has potential long-term ramifications beyond just grazing conflicts . . .
A ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recognizing a connection between bighorn sheep die-offs and diseases transmitted by domestic sheep could have far-reaching ramifications on federal grazing allotments in the West.
The ruling earlier this month by the three-judge panel against domestic sheep producers upheld a lower court ruling in Idaho supporting a U.S. Forest Service decision to close sheep grazing allotments to protect bighorns.
“A lot of people were looking at this waiting to see what they did,” said Laurie Rule of Advocates for the West, noting it’s the first time a U.S. circuit court has ruled on disease transmission between the species.
Logging Lake in Glacier National Park, USA – National Park Service
So, these two guys quit their jobs and headed out to take photos of all 59 U.S. national parks in 59 weeks. Their web site already has an impressive collection of photos . . .
This summer, the National Park Service turns 100. It’s safe to say that lots of Americans will be celebrating by visiting a national park.
But two friends — Darius Nabors and Trevor Kemp — are marking the occasion by visiting all of them.
That’s 59 parks, from Joshua Tree to Shenandoah, and from remote Alaskan wilderness to Virgin Island beaches. And Nabors and Kemp are crossing them off the list in 59 weeks.
They quit their jobs to make the journey, which is partially crowd-funded, and are documenting the process on their website, 59in59.com.
Bull Trout – Joel Sartore/National Geographic Stock with Wade Fredenberg/USFWS
Rob Davies, the Hungry Horse/Glacier View district ranger, is asking for public feedback on a small, low-impact project in the Big Creek drainage to improve conditions for Bull Trout. If possible, they’d really like to get this accomplished in April, before the stream flows really get going. This means they are looking for public comments by March 30.
Here’s what Rob had to say in his email (lightly edited), followed by the full text of the project letter . . .
We will be issuing a NEPA decision for a small simple project that was presented at the Inter-local Meeting last February.
We would like to know if anyone has concerns or wishes to provide comments on this project…
Essentially the State and the Forest Service wants to breach a log jam, and several small beaver dams where migrating bull trout were blocked from upstream movement to their normal spawning area (last fall). The work would be accomplished using a Spider Backhoe…… if you never have seen this type of heavy equipment it is really interesting…….. it’s essentially a small excavator but instead of using steel tracks, it moves on 4 robotic-like legs so that soil and vegetation disturbance is very minimal.
We would like to complete this work before peak runoff occurs this spring so natural flows will help scour and maintain the channel. Normally bull trout projects never remove or disturb large wood in streams but in this case, the Flathead bull trout populations are so depressed from other Flathead Lake issues…… doing all that we can to assure spawning success is important.
Please provide comments, by email, in writing, or by phone no later than March 30th, 2016.
Rob’s contact information:
Rob Davies , District Ranger
Flathead National Forest
Hungry Horse – Glacier View Ranger Districts
PO Box 190340
Hungry Horse, MT, MT 59919
Phone: 406-387-3801
Email: rdavies@fs.fed.us
The Obama administration has cancelled a disputed oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced Thursday the Bureau of Land Management has cancelled the 6,200-acre lease in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The lease, currently held by Solonex LLC, was issued by the BLM in 1982 on land considered sacred to the Blackfeet tribes of the U.S. and Canada.
The cancellation is expected to be challenged in federal court by Solenex, a Louisiana company seeking to drill for oil and gas.
The BLM concluded the Solonex lease was improperly issued in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historical Preservation Act. The agency consulted with the U.S. Forest Service, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Blackfeet Tribe, leaseholder and others, according to federal officials.
A good summary of the county’s plans for the North Fork Road, if they can get the money . . .
A $1.6 million federal grant proposal to improve the North Fork Road from Polebridge to the Canadian border will likely be submitted by April 4, Flathead National Forest officials said last week.
In a presentation to the county commissioners, forest staff officer Gary Danczyk said that if the grant is awarded, the project likely would not begin until 2018 or 2019.
Officials from the U.S. Border Patrol and Glacier National Park, which are also included in the application, also spoke in support of the grant proposal.
A bighorn relocated to the Cathedral Range of Yosemite National Park’s backcountry in March 2015 – Steve Bumgardner, Yosemite Conservancy – National Park Service
Here’s a long, fascinating op-ed from the New York Times describing the increasingly hi-tech techniques used to establish, maintain and monitor wildlife populations. Kudos to Walter Roberts for spotting this one . . .
If you ever have the good fortune to see a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the experience might go like this: On a sunny morning in Yosemite National Park, you walk through alpine meadows and then up a ridge to the summit of Mount Gibbs at 12,764 feet above sea level. You unwrap a chocolate bar amid breathtaking views of mountain and desert and then you notice movement below.
Binoculars reveal three sturdy ewes perched on a wall of rock, accompanied by two lambs and a muscular ram. The sight fills you with awe and also with gratitude for the national parks, forests and, yes, environmental regulations that keep the American dream of wilderness alive.
Unless your binoculars are unusually powerful, you are unlikely to notice that many of those sheep wear collars manufactured by Lotek Wireless of Newmarket, Ontario. You will, therefore, remain unaware that GPS and satellite communications hardware affixed to those collars allows wildlife managers in distant air-conditioned rooms to track every move made by those sheep. Like similar equipment attached to California condors, pronghorn antelope, pythons, fruit bats, African wildebeest, white-tailed eagles, growling grass frogs, feral camels and countless other creatures, those collars are the only visible elements of the backlot infrastructure that now puts and keeps so many animals in the wild.
