Conservation

Amid challenges like dwindling salmon, noise pollution and climate change, the Pacific Northwest is wrestling with how to protect its most iconic inhabitants.

Two grizzlies might be either injured or dead after being shot by hunters northeast of Seeley Lake.

Mike Garrity writes, "Decades of logging, road building and motorized recreation have fragmented grizzly habitat and limited recovery.

While visitors may not notice a significant impact in the short term, others say the shutdown is holding parks and their staff back from meeting their mission to preserve the land and serve the public.

The Forest Service didn't "err on the side of the bear" when it left out illegal road use from the project assessment.

Mike Garrity writes, "Unfortunately, the governor and delegation appear locked into outdated, unscientific, and unsupported false assumptions that wild Yellowstone bison have transmitted brucellosis to cattle. They have not."

Under a plan approved by a magistrate judge, the Forest Service wanted to go after invasive trout in Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

The state and Missoula city and county have worked to log, thin and burn Marshal Canyon’s wildland-urban interface.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is anticipating a federal decision to transfer full responsibility for grizzly bears to the state and continues to consider corner-crossing to be trespassing, according to FWP’s director.

Conservation groups want to block a 10- to 15-year project intended to reduce wildfire risk and thin forests in a wildlife area near Missoula.