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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 But Republican majorities in the 2021 Montana legislature repealed the initiative and Republican Gov.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 […]
Setting the record straight about citizens’ rights
Politicians like Sen. Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte have erroneously claimed that the Alliance for the Wild Rockies gets rich off the Equal Access to Justice Act for working to keep Montana, “high, wide and handsome.” It appears they either don’t understand how this federal law works or are intentionally misleading the public. Montanans […]
A big win for lynx, grizzly bears
Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) are medium-sized wildcats with a thick coat and broad, furry paws that allow them to stay on top of the snowpack. Lynx are an old-growth forest-dependent species, whose numbers have fallen due to the loss of old-growth forests from logging, the effects of climate change, and trapping. On March 24, 2000, the contiguous […]
Federal court halts massive logging and road building project in Ninemile Valley
Approving a magistrate judge’s recommendations, on Oct. 5, the Montana federal district court ruled for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Flathead-Lolo-Bitterroot Citizen Task Force in their lawsuits opposing the Soldier-Butler timber sale. The court ruled that the Forest Service failed to comply with its own self-imposed rules to protect elk winter range […]
Infrastructure and budget bills contain provisions which will make climate change worse
In so many ways the future hangs in the balance as Congress debates the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill and $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Although encouraging the use of more electric vehicles and increasing solar and wind energy will definitely reduce the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere, there are also huge problems […]
Saving the grizzly bears in the Yaak-Cabinet Mountains by lawsuit
Montana’s Governor Greg Gianforte and U.S. Senator Steve Daines recently claimed “frivolous” lawsuits had to be stopped so more logging could occur in our dwindling National Forests. But there’s nothing frivolous about the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filing a 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue the Forest Service to stop the Ripley logging project […]
With all the fish dying statewide, why is killing more trout a top priority for the state?
Apparently The American Fisheries Society doesn’t approve of citizens criticizing the plan by Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to use rotenone to poison all the fish in 67 miles of streams and lakes in and flowing out of the Scapegoat Wilderness Area. But considering those lakes and streams are just upstream of federally-designated […]
Remove non-native fish without poisoning our streams
Two week ago, Laurie Brown, a licensed nurse practitioner, called the Alliance for the Wild Rockies out of concern for the Game Creek watershed. She lives just south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and gets her drinking water from a well adjacent to Game Creek. She recently discovered that the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish […]