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Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population is crashing and we’re trying to stop it
There’s no other way to put it, the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly population is going downhill fast – which is the opposite of the agency’s legal mandate to recover, not extinguish, endangered species. In 2018 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service counted 54 grizzlies in its monitoring report. In 2019 only 50, down to 45 in 2020 and […]
Stop massive, destructive clearcuts on Yellowstone National Park’s border
Thanks to objections by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council the United States Forest Service dropped its huge South Plateau logging project last year. Because the plan called for thousands of acres of clearcuts on the very border of Yellowstone National Park, it violated the existing forest plan’s restrictions on how […]
Blackfoot-Clearwater, Lincoln Prosperity Proposal worse than Holland Lake expansion
Thank you to the 6,507 people who submitted comments opposing the expansion of the Holland Lake Lodge. But if you oppose turning over Holland Lake Lodge to the POWDR corporation because it exploits public lands for private profit, be aware that the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act and the Lincoln Prosperity Proposal do the same. All three proposals have […]
Adding more grazing land so close to Yellowstone is bear baiting
Montana’s Paradise Valley is aptly named, sitting between two towering mountain ranges, it cradles the mighty Yellowstone River that flows from its headwaters in America’s first national park and provides critical habitat to the native species still present 200 years after Lewis and Clark’s expedition. Yet, the Forest Service decided to expand cattle grazing on […]
Daines and Rosendale are timber industry puppets
Just like clockwork, Montana’s junior senator, Steve Daines and representative Matt Rosendale, have repeated the timber industry propaganda on forest management at their recent Western Caucus roundtable in Bozeman. Montanans, however, not only deserve better, they deserve the truth. Rep. Rosendale, like Sen, Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte, has once again attempted to demonize conservation […]
Hurting today’s bull trout at the expense of the 19th century
The Clark Fork River is federally-designated as “critical habitat” for bull trout, which have been listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act since 1999. The Upper Clark Fork is also part of the nation’s largest Superfund site having suffered severe pollution from flushing a century of toxic mining and smelting wastes down the river. […]
How to really protect old growth forests
On Earth Day, President Joe Biden announced a new policy to protect mature and old growth trees which store the most carbon. Unfortunately, the president’s order will not ban logging of mature and old-growth forests or even protect the trees. Instead, the President’s order is the latest version of a long bipartisan, Orwellian plan to subsidize the destruction […]
What’s the price on the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s ethics?
Do you ever wonder how much your ethics are worth? Apparently, for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the price is considerably more than the “30 pieces of silver” Judas got for his sell out, but that was 2,000 years ago. A cache of recently released documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows the Forest Service spent […]
Forest Service withdraws its appeal of massive logging project in grizzly country
It’s hard to imagine the damage an enormous timber sale would have had on 70 square miles of Montana’s Ninemile Valley, located about seven miles northwest of Huson, in the Lolo National Forest. But thanks to our lawsuit and two federal court rulings in our favor, the forests, rivers and wildlife in the Soldier-Butler project […]
Groups halt grazing in Elkhorn Mountains
Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council successfully halt grazing and sagebrush-juniper burning in the Elkhorn Mountains Wildlife Management Area A federal district court ruled in favor of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council in a lawsuit to force the Bureau of Land Management to conduct an adequate environmental […]
Big problems with small nuclear reactor proposals for Montana
Politicians and investor-owned utilities are now proposing small nuclear reactors in Montana to replace the old coal-fired power plants at Colstrip. For the last 44 years a successful Citizens’ Initiative banned nuclear power in Montana unless approved by the voters. But Republican majorities in the 2021 Montana legislature repealed the initiative and Republican Gov. Greg […]
Lee Metcalf would despise Tester’s Blackfoot bill
As a fifth-generation Montanan I vividly recall when true wilderness icons like Montana’s Sen. Lee Metcalf successfully fought for the 1964 Wilderness Act and passed bills designating millions of acres as Wilderness Areas. Then, there’s Senator Tester’s S.1493, the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Act, that designates only 80,000 acres as wilderness while mandating “logging without laws” on […]