Community Briefs

MBF Kids Club starts Sept. 17

SEELEY LAKE – Mission Bible Fellowship’s Kids Club starts again for the year Monday, Sept. 17. Kindergarten through sixth graders are invited every Monday for games, snacks, music, crafts and Bible stories. Students will be picked up at Seeley Lake Elementary at 3 p.m. and will walk over to MBF. Pick up is 4:30 p.m. at MBF. The event is free to all students.

See Suzie Teafoe in the SLE office for the permission slip or call Erika Wilson, 499-2903, for more information.

BLM to conduct prescribed burns in the Blackfoot Valley

Smoke may be visible periodically during the next two months in the mountains east of Missoula as the Bureau of Land Management’s Missoula Field Office prepares for five prescribed burns.

All of the burns are located in the Blackfoot Valley: four are located approximately five miles southwest of Clearwater Junction; the other burn is 12 miles west of Lincoln.

The burns may take up to 14 days to complete and will take place when weather and fuel conditions are favorable, but could occur anytime over the next two months.

The prescribed burns will reduce the amount of vegetation and hazardous fuels in the area. Fire specialists are attempting to restore the historic vegetative conditions characterized by large-diameter Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and western larch, with intermittent openings of shrubs, forbs and bunch grasses. By removing the small, “ladder fuels” and down woody debris, the impact of large wildfires is also reduced.

Firefighters will light the prescribed burns by ground ignition using drip torches and by aerial ignition using helicopters outfitted with aerial ignition devices. Firefighters from the BLM, United States Forest Service and Montana Department of Natural Resource Conservation, will be involved in the projects.

For more information, contact BLM Fire Management Specialist Steve Hancock at the Missoula Field Office, (406) 329-3869.

Chronic Wasting Disease Public Info Session in Missoula, Sept. 17

MISSOULA - Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is hosting a public information session in Missoula on Chronic Wasting Disease and planned surveillance efforts for the upcoming hunting season.

The session is Monday, Sept. 17, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the FWP office in Missoula (3201 Spurgin Road) and will include a short presentation, followed by an opportunity to ask questions and visit with staff, including Emily Almberg, FWP’s Bozeman-based wildlife disease ecologist.

Last year, FWP discovered CWD in deer south of Billings and north of Chester, in north-central Montana. This contagious neurological disease can infect deer, elk and moose. It is always fatal and there is no known cure.

Because of the new discovery, transport restrictions are in place for deer harvested in locations where CWD has been detected. FWP will conduct extra surveillance during the general fall hunting season in high-priority areas in parts of northern, southern and western Montana, including Hunting Districts 210, 212 and 217, in the Upper Clark Fork.

Join FWP biologists and others at the Sept. 17 information session in Missoula to ask questions and learn ways to help FWP with CWD surveillance this fall. FWP will host sessions in other locations around Montana later this fall.

To learn more visit fwp.mt.gov/cwd.

 

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