New Owners Promise Continued Public Access To NW Montana Timberlands
The owner of a large block of private timberland in northwest Montana says it’s likely done its last major land sale after a deal announced this week. Southern Pine Plantations sold 125,000 acres of timberland west of Kalispell.
The land was sold to a Texas family, owners of Goosehead Insurance. Mark Jones is the company’s chairman and CEO. He says the family will work to maintain public access to the land through Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks block management program. We want to be a good neighbor, but we want to make sure that people understand that we also expect people to be good neighbors to us.
iStock
A bill heard at the Montana Legislature Tuesday reignited a long-running debate over the role of money in hunting access in Montana.
Republican Jason Ellsworth from Hamilton wants Montana to set aside a percentage of nonresident deer and elk hunting licenses for out-of-staters hunting with outfitters. Ellsworth said the state’s current lottery system for nonresident hunters means outfitter businesses rely too much on chance for clients each year. You know, I think we owe it to these small businesses to sit here and say, ‘Yeah, we wanna make sure you thrive and survive, Ellsworth said.
He said that outfitted hunters spend about five times as much in the state as non-resident do-it-yourselfers, fueling local economies throughout Montana. A study from the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research showed that hunting outfitters generated more than $50 million in revenue in 2017.
Former Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Martha Williams was appointed on Wednesday as second-in-command at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Biden Administration. William’s replacement within Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s cabinet was also named today.
As principal deputy director of FWS, Williams will oversee a federal agency tasked with managing wildlife and habitat across the country, and in charge of more than 150 million acres of land in the National Wildlife Refuge System. The agency also administers the Endangered Species Act.
At FWP, Williams was at the helm of fishing and hunting policy in Montana. That agency also guides how the state deals with federally-protected species like grizzly bears, bull trout and Canada lynx, and
Editor s note: Follow-up reporting on this story uncovered evidence that the damage to the ram s horn was likely caused by damage during fighting, not lightning.
Although he has a trophy room of about 100 mounts that feature everything from mule deer and whitetails to bruiser bull elk, one of the newest additions to Scott Chesterâs collection will be an animal he never hunted.
Montana Wildlife Artistry taxidermy, operated by father and son Mitch and Jim Howe, are preparing a life-sized mount of a bighorn ram for Chester. The base of the ram s horns measured more than 16 inches and stretched out to 44 inches. It would have scored close to 206 inches under the Boone and Crockett scoring system â a trophy-class animal â if it werenât for one large flaw. The ram has a baseball-sized gap burned into the back of the right horn.
BNSF Plan Aims To Reduce Train-Related Grizzly Bear Deaths
The BNSF Railway Company Tuesday published a long-awaited habitat conservation plan intended to reduce grizzly bear mortalities in Northwest Montana.
Eight grizzlies were killed on railroads in near Glacier National Park in 2019, the most of any year on record. Those bears are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. That same year, conservation groups threatened to sue, alleging those railway-related deaths violated a part of the ESA that prohibits all killing of protected animals, even if it’s accidental.
That’s just the latest in two decades of legal threats over railroads and grizzly conservation, says Courtney Wallace, a spokesperson with BNSF.