Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The Bureau of Land Management has released for review and public comment the Lewistown Field Office Greater Sage-Grouse Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement. It is available for review and comment throughout the 90-day period ending Feb. 5. During this comment period, the Lewistown Field Office has scheduled two public open house meetings to provide information and answer questions regarding the plan so the public can make more informed and specific comments to the plan. The next one is Dec. 18 from...
Introducing the North American Serengeti. A proposed million acres or so of Montana land, public and private, which will turn productive land that would feed hundreds of thousands of people into a reserve that produces, actually, nothing. “We want to create a place where people from all over the world can come and see the American West as it was a thousand years ago.” Those were the words of the APR (American Prairie Reserve) Marketing and Content Director, Katie Teson when I asked if creating an “American Serengeti” from the holdings of the AP...
There’s no one answering the phone at the Glasgow Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management. “No one is available to take your call because of the government shutdown,” a recorded message says. A recording at the USDA office intones, “This office is currently closed due to the lapse in federal government funding.” The voice says you may leave a message. “Your voice mail will be returned as soon as funding is restored.” There might be no posted county commodity prices in The Courier, which the FSA provides, for the duration of the shutdown.... Full story
Tom Flowers, a 25-year veteran of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, has been named as the agency’s new Region 6 supervisor. In his new position, Flowers, 54, will supervise about 40 full-time employees in an administrative area that spans from the North Dakota and Saskatchewan borders to Sidney, Circle and Loma, and the Liberty County line west of Havre. The sprawling and diverse Region includes a wide variety of fish and wildlife habitats, the Missouri River and Fort Peck Reservoir, and the Fort Peck, Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy Indian r...
A director of the United Property Owners organization described proposed Resource Management plans of the Bureau of Land Management in a very incorrect and misleading way in a recent Montana newspaper opinion piece. He got it dangerously wrong and typically misleading in several ways. These plans deal entirely with public lands administered by the BLM – not private property. The BLM has no say over what private landowners do with their own property. The BLM this spring released three draft Resource Management Plans for some 5.8 million acres i...
A Canadian oil exploration company has withdrawn the offer it made to lease minerals on land belonging to Valley County, citing the difficulty of conducting business under restrictions intended to protect the habitat of the threatened sage grouse. In an email to the Valley County commissioners sent on Tuesday, Don Lee, an attorney for Montex Oil Co., said, “Unfortunately because of the sage grouse habitat issues involving federal lands, it will be extremely difficult to conduct exploratory o...
When did the sage grouse become a national priority surpassing energy independence, and does this fowl really require millions of acres of energy-rich land to survive? Those are the obvious questions that arise when reading the Bureau of Land Management’s recent 812-page Resource Management Plan for the Hi-Line. The document, released this Spring and currently out for public comment, is a good example of the unfortunate trend toward declaring Montana off-limits to development. It contains a few bright points, but mostly the plan deprives the H...
A few years ago I was trucking my way around Washington, D.C. in a snowstorm of Biblical proportions. A voice came over my radio saying, “ All non-essential government employees need not report to work today due to the inclement weather conditions”. Are you like me, thinking, just who are these “non-essentials drawing a government paycheck every two weeks for doing, by government admission, essentially, nothing essential. I made a few phone calls and discovered, through a few honest offic... Full story
The Bureau of Land Management is taking comments on a draft resource management plan (RMP) for the 2.4 million acres of public land and 4.2 million acres of federal minerals it manages in the HiLine District, which stretches from the Rockies to North Dakota, and from the Canadian border to south of U.S. 2 and to the Missouri River. An updated plan was due, since the district is operating with plans that are more than 25 years old. The pressures of oil and gas development, threats to the greater sage-grouse, increased conflicts between land use...