environment

The plan and environmental impact statement covers a wide range of topics, including conflict prevention and response, transplanting bears, management of motorized access, climate change and hunting.

Bill Lombardi writes, "Policymakers now must figure out a way to throttle the push on the gas to peddle industrial tourism and commercial recreation on or near our public lands."

The bears are still looking for food, but they’ll be finding a little less of it in the Bitterroot and Deer Lodge valleys. A new carcass pickup program has started in the Bitterroot Valley and the program in the Deer Lodge area has been expanded.

Officials with the Salmon-Challis National Forest will hold a community meeting Tuesday in Salmon to discuss the Moose Fire Burned Area Emergency Response.

The city of Missoula and the nonprofit Trout Unlimited need several hundred thousand dollars to meet their fundraising goals in order to begin removing the McKinley Lake dam in the summer of 2024.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has completed a draft plan for managing grizzly bears once the bear is no longer a threatened species. But delisting may be a long way off if land agencies allow more projects that threaten the bear’s secure habitat.

Average summer temperatures in Missoula County are projected to increase as much as six degrees by mid-century, according to a publication from Climate Ready Missoula, and if the heat wave of this past August was any indication, that change is already underway.

Recently, international attention has homed in on the problem, which is only growing worse as plastic doesn’t decompose but degrades into smaller pieces that will remain in the environment for thousands of years.

Noting that nearly one-third of all endangered species live in these refuges, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit last year to challenge what was the largest-ever expansion of hunting and fishing throughout the National Wildlife Refuge System, executed under former President Donald Trump in 2020.

The general big game hunting season in Montana ended on Sunday with more than 9,200 hunters appearing at four check stations in Northwest Montana.