Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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I'd like to ask you to please take time to contact the legislature. SB284, the bill that would involve county commissioners in plans to release bison in their counties, is still languishing in the House Ag Committee, where it has been sitting for almost an entire month. The "antis" have apparently found out about it. From what I've heard, calls have been coming in from California and New York opposed to it, and some groups are using robocalls. When Jason called in in support of it, the operator assumed that he was opposed to it, and one...
There have been two more state bison meetings since last I wrote. One was July 14 and 15 in Billings to propose testable alternatives for an Environmental Impact Statement, and one was Oct. 9 in Great Falls to develop those alternatives. There was a lot to be depressed about at those meetings. A depressing number of people travelled from western Montana to Billings to say they want a herd of bison, and they want to keep it in our backyards. They didn’t comprehend why that was an issue for us. Depressingly, the bison discussion group r...
Dear Editor: One of the most important election decisions that will come before us in Valley County is that of county commissioner. Our commissioners represent our best legal line of defense against state and federal overreach. I believe that our county's welfare will depend on choosing a candidate that is dedicated to protecting water rights and private property rights and to ensuring that both the state and federal governments follow the law and coordinate land use decisions with the commissioners and the county plan. Sierra Dawn Stoneberg...
Maybe you heard. Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (FWP) was planning a bison discussion meeting for April 15 and 16. The meeting was cancelled late Saturday, April 12. Personally, I found out less than 24 hours before I was set to leave for the gathering. So what does this cancellation mean in the ongoing discussion of whether or not the right to self determination applies to Eastern Montanans? I just can’t tell. Make no mistake. Simply having the discussion is a huge improvement. Under the past administration, the approach was: There is no s...
Another hunting season is behind us. Once again, our family handed out materials detailing some of the political challenges facing citizens of Valley and Phillips counties. The ongoing threat of unfenced, state-owned bison figured prominently. Some of you will recall that one of our hunters last year took one look at our brochures and pamphlets, and then dug out his wallet to finance the next round of printing. Responses were similar this year. One set of hunters insisted that Jason and I accept a generous stipend to attend the Fish Wildlife...
One of the common refrains that I heard at the Montana Fish Wildlife and Park’s (FWP) meeting in Lewistown about releasing wild bison in counties that do not want wild bison was that we need to do this because of the hunters. It was said that FWP is responsible to the hunters that pay for the department, and that these hunters are requesting wild bison that they can hunt. This line of reasoning made me start to think about all the reasons that hunters visiting our ranch have given for not wanting wild bison released in the Missouri Breaks. I t...
Do you ever feel like the blind men in the fable that were studying the elephant? You can grab the tail and say, “Oh, the elephant is like a rope,” and then grab the trunk and say, “Oh, the elephant is like a snake.” The trouble is, you can study the tail and trunk closely for years without realizing that they also go together! I had one of those moments recently when the implications of something I’ve known for years hit home. Bison were disappearing from Yellowstone in the early 1900s. Here’s the timeline according to my sources: Reports fro...
Dr. Cliff Montagne, of Montana State University’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, brought grad students Lora Soderquist, Rebecca Kurnick, Badamgarav (Badmaa) Dovchin and Sarina Bao (from Mongolia and Chinese-controlled Inner Mongolia) out to Horse Ranch on Timber Creek for a seminar on Eastern Montana ranch ecology and management philosophy May 10 to 13. Thanks to our generous community, we had a number of interesting seminar stops on our way to the ranch. Rose Teske o...
In the May 13 Great Falls Tribune, Tom France wrote, “The million-acre Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, ideal native prairie bison habitat ... likely will emerge as the best possible site – and perhaps the only viable location – for restoring an ecologically significant bison herd” and “the vast majority of Montanans ... believe our vast grasslands retain space for wild bison.” These are understandable, but dangerous misconceptions. Northeastern Montana prairies (the CMR is a lake, not a prairie) historically are high quality hab...