Daily Montanan

PacificSource Health Plans, one of Montana’s three primary health insurance providers, will cease its Montana operations and exit the marketplace by the end of the year.

A tract of land near Yellowstone National Park which had been identified as a potential gold mining site in 2023 has been added to the roster of public lands.

The 161-acre parcel was added to the Custer-Gallatin National Forest in two parcels, one acquired by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the other by The Conservation Fund.

The State of Montana received federal approval from the United States Department of Agriculture to ban soft drinks, junk food, and candy from the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Some families and groups are pushing for an ombudsman position to be added, expressing frustration with out-of-state transfers.

Organizers and advocates in Montana are pushing for a citizen’s statutory initiative I-194, the Montana Plan, which seeks to remove corporate spending from politics.

According to a report by mapping software company OnX, there are 8.3 million acres of public land across the West that is corner locked, including 871,000 acres in Montana — more than half of the 1.52 million total acres of landlocked public land in the state.

NorthWestern Energy officials have said data centers aren’t relevant to the utility’s proposed merger with Black Hills Corp — but data centers are part of their discussions with investors and a rationale for a merger.

The Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision late last week canceling a series of permits that allowed bison grazing on federal land by the nonprofit conservation organization American Prairie.

If NorthWestern Energy and Black Hills Corp merge, the deal could mean as much as $16 million for CEO Brian Bird, and a total of nearly $30 million for the top five executives of the Montana utility.