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May is National Wildfire Awareness month, and the Blackfoot Clearwater community is prone to wildland fire. During your annual spring-cleaning efforts celebrate Wildfire Awareness Month by preparing your home and property for the upcoming fire season. Some suggestions include: • Clean your roof and gutters by removing pine needles or other debris. • Remove any flammable material within five feet of your home. • Remove items stored under your decks and porches, especially the remnants of last winter’s firewood and other flammable materia...
Researchers say it takes 21 days to develop new habits. In that time, we’ve seen bewildering changes in our communities and around the world. What habits have we formed and which will endure? Despite the travel bans, quarantines, isolation and tragedy – and the roller coaster of emotions that follow, we’re seeing firsthand the exponential value of Nature in her simplest forms. In the last 21 days, we’ve seen many new faces connecting with the power of Nature and the emotional, mental and physical healing she provides. Listening to a creek,...
As we grapple with adjusting to a new normal, I find many people seeking outdoor recreational therapy. I expect renewed interest to continue as spring gives way to summer and summer to fall and I can only hope that our lives can continue to take on more normalcy in that time. For those of you already looking forward to the fall hunting seasons, I will give you an update of what I have learned over the winter and spring. I will also give updates on the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management...
SEELEY LAKE - "Health should come before homework, family should become before frustration and learning should come before letter grades," said Missoula County Public Schools Superintendent Rob Watson said in the Missoula County COVID-19 update April 15. "It's not about your letter grade at this point it is really about learning. If we can keep students engaged in learning activities through the closure, it will help when we get finished." Seeley Lake Elementary and Seeley-Swan High School teach...
SWAN VALLEY – Audience members watched as their neighbors and familiar places appeared on the big screen at Swan Valley School March 8 as part of Scott Kirby's Main Street Souvenirs presentation. Kirby captured the Blackfoot Valley around Potomac, up the Clearwater through Seeley Lake and north to Swan Lake in his multi-media stage performance. He artfully combined live music, narration, historical and modern photographs, paintings and video clips to tell the story of the gathering of small-town...
Imagine trying to hike, bike or ride a snowmobile in your local mountains only to encounter a fence and no trespassing sign every mile or so. That could have been the future for hundreds of thousands of acres in the Blackfoot and Swan Valleys...and beyond. That was also a big reason that The Nature Conservancy took a real leap of faith when it began buying land from Plum Creek Timber more than 20 years ago. Over time, we bought more than half a million acres of this former industrial timber...
SEELEY LAKE - The Nature Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service are excited to announce the finalization of a sale which will move 16,400 acres of former commercial timber lands into the public domain. The land, west of Seeley Lake, was characterized by the checkerboard pattern of public-private ownership that was created more than a century ago. This sale includes land from the 117,000 acres that TNC purchased from Plum Creek Timber Company in 2015. Over the last 30 years, TNC has purchased more t...
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Elementary Junior High Art Elective is hosting its first Bear Aware school-wide art show through November. The intent of the art show is to provide a prevention and safety lesson for the community and make everyone more aware of how to secure attractants from bears. The public is invited to view the display in the breezeway by the junior high and in front of the kindergarten classroom. Several of the pieces were chosen for display at local businesses and area w...
ELBOW LAKE - This letter is a response to the Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) of the proposed removal and remediation of Elbow Lake Dam. The project title itself is a contradiction to the proposal because the title refers to the name of what the state wants to eliminate, Elbow Lake. I have had my State Lease on Elbow Lake since 1998. I acquired it from my friend Anna Lukens who had the lease since leases were created at Elbow Lake in the mid 1950’s. It was called Elbow Lake, with emphasis on the word “Lake” because it had been a lake since...
ELBOW LAKE – Residents on Elbow Lake are facing what they feel is an inevitable decision by the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to remove and remediate the Elbow Lake dam. While some property owners and lessees feel this will negatively impact the ecosystem, recreation opportunities and property values for years to come, the Draft Environmental Assessment released Sept. 30 proposes the project is necessary to remove the unauthorized, ar...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jon Tester submitted a letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ranking Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) Thursday, July 25 requesting a bill mark-up for the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act. Tester reintroduced the bill at a rally in June. “For more than a decade, Montanans have worked hand-in-hand to create a long-term solution for public lands in the Blackfoot River watershed in the Lolo National Forest,” Tester wrote in a press release. “Now is the time to move fo...
On June 7, Senator Jon Tester reintroduced the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act. As members of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project, we sincerely thank our senior senator for his leadership and for continuing to champion this bipartisan bill that 73 percent of Montanans support. The reason for the bill’s popularity is simple: It offers something for just about every Montanan. • It opens up new snowmobiling opportunities by creating the 2,000-acre Otatsy Recreation Management Area near Ovando. • It preserves prized mountain bike...
SEELEY LAKE – Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Clearwater Unit Supervisor Kristen Baker-Dickinson and US Forest Service Seeley Lake District Ranger Quinn Carver presented about the local applications of the Good Neighbor Authority at the Seeley Lake Community Council meeting June 10. They are both excited about this opportunity to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and resiliency work in the area. The Good Neighbor Authority was put into law in the 2014 Farm Bill and the authority expanded in the 2018 O...
BONNER, MONT. – Standing on the banks of the Blackfoot River, U.S. Senator Jon Tester announced Friday, June 7 that he is reintroducing his Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act. The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project was developed through more than a decade of local discussions among conservation, recreation and timber groups in the Seeley Lake area. The project provides for forest restoration activities to support local timber jobs, the development of additional recreational trails and th...
SEELEY LAKE – Seeley-Swan High School seniors and their parents gathered for the annual senior awards ceremony May 31. While many awards and scholarships had already been awarded, some students continued to add to their list of recognitions with class awards and local scholarships. Of the 28 SSHS graduates, 17 maintained a cumulative grade point average of a 3.0 or higher throughout their high school career. Brian Atwell, Lily Mercer, Hunter Shelmerdine and Jory Towe scored higher than a 27 o...
SEELEY LAKE – "There is a [National Forest] crisis right now because of increased wildfire and increased diseases and more people moving in to the Wildland Urban Interface," said Daniel Hottle, US Forest Service press officer with the northern region. "[The Forest Service] has not been operating on the scale that we need to." With the 2015 Farm Bill, 2018 Omnibus Bill and the 2018 Executive Order 13855 from President Donald Trump, the Forest Service has expanded authorities to prioritize f...
SEELEY LAKE – Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks deployed 19 GPS collars on adult female elk on the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management Area, also known as the Game Range, Dec. 6. This is part of a new long-term elk research project that hopes to help land managers understand elk distribution and use following wildfire. Researchers Mark Hurley and Ross Baty studied elk distribution on the Game Range in the late 1980s and early 1990s using VHF radio collars. Their work identified migration r...
It may seem far away now, but we all remember the wet, chilly days of last spring and the water that seemed to be everywhere as streams overflowed when the snow melted. Those conditions made it challenging for the trumpeter swans that, with help from many concerned landowners and others, have been trying to make a comeback in the Blackfoot Watershed. At least one nest site was under water for weeks, making it impossible for the swans to nest. And eggs or young cygnets in other nests may have...
SEELEY LAKE – This winter Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is starting the Elk Basin Restoration Project on the westside of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area also known as the Game Range. The focus of the 3,000 acre project is grassland restoration and dealing with the conifer encroachment. Historically in the region, the valley bottoms were expansive grasslands dominated primarily by rough fescue, Idaho fescue and bluebunch wheatgrass. Rough fescue has very high winter forage v...
SEELEY LAKE – After more than three years of gathering feedback about priorities and vision for the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project (CBP) area, The Nature Conservancy has identified two main themes for the land as they continue work through the transitions to new ownership. Along with seeking permanent conservation on the ground, recreational development and a community-governed ownership outcome are the two new focus areas that will further TNC's mission to connect people to the land. Ownership t...
SEELEY LAKE – More than 100 people crowded into the Seeley Lake Community Hall Thursday, Aug. 30, to view a film celebrating a man acclaimed as the father of bear biology. The documentary "Walking Bear Comes Home, the Life and Work of Chuck Jonkel" was part of the educational Pure Montana Tales series sponsored by Clearwater Resource Council and Blackfoot Challenge. Jonkel's interaction with bears began in 1959 after he graduated with a Master Degree in Wildlife Biology from the University of Mo...
When Rep. Greg Gianforte voted in committee in favor of HB 1349, a bill that would allow mountain biking in some wilderness areas, it drew a response from mountain bikers who supported the new bill as well as strong dissent from groups like the International Mountain Biking Association. After hearing from mountain biking and conservation groups in Montana, Gianforte later backpedaled, saying he no longer supported the bill and would vote against it in the unlikely scenario it reached the House...
SEELEY LAKE- Last Sunday, community members and Montanans from all over the state gathered to work in Lost Horse Meadow in order to prepare it for a prescribed burn in the fall. The Nature Conservancy, Blackfoot Challenge and Five Valleys Land Trust worked together for the sixth annual Revive and Thrive work party and celebration Sunday, July 15. Volunteers pulled noxious weeds and cut down trees in order to help restore a native plant, blue camas, to the meadow. "This is a really exciting...
Our Wildlife in the West students recently went fishing at Upsata Lake but they didn't want to catch anything, except maybe some plankton, aquatic insects or algae. Motored gently about in a small skiff by volunteer Barry Gordon, and led by Blackfoot Challenge's Caitlin Mitchell, we hand-reeled in a white, three-foot net on a hundred-foot rope. Shaped like a wizard's hat, our net yielded just a little draft of fluid the color of weak green tea, which we promptly conveyed into a 250mL plastic...
In 2004 when the Missoula County Weed District initially mapped the infestation of yellowflag iris that had recently been reported to us on the Clearwater River between Salmon Lake and the Blackfoot River, we faced a daunting challenge: 10 miles of river, both banks heavily infested and nearly 83 acres of dense thickets peppered with yellowflag iris. The yellowflag iris was already beginning to fill-in shallow bays on Elbow Lake, degrade wetlands and river bank habitat on the Clearwater River...
