Town Has Had It Up To Here With Cows Free-Roaming Montana Bovines Bring Calls To Fence Them In

Some people here are fed up with cows that wander through town, eating flowers and fouling public space.

“Every summer, usually about August, here come the cows, and there go the flowers,” said Muffie Thomson, manager of the Flathead Bank of Lakeside and vice chairman of the town council. “We’ve had 13 of them in our parking lot. They eat the apples, and then, well, it’s not so pleasant what they leave behind.”

Cows wandering through Lakeside’s business and residential district are a quaint attraction for tourists, but a nuisance for the locals.

There is an effort to form a herd district that would require some control over cows now able to roam under Montana’s open-range policy. In an open range, ranchers do not have to fence their livestock.

For the herd district to be created, the petition circulating must be signed by landowners representing 55 percent of the 9,034 acres in the proposed district, said county election director Dianne Murer. She has verified the signatures of people owning 286 acres.

Members of the town council have sporadically gone door to door collecting signatures. They plan a big push next week, when they will mail petitions to 1,100 addresses in the proposed district. It includes some national forest land and Plum Creek Timber Co. holdings.

It is late summer when about a dozen cows wander over Blacktail Mountain and into Lakeside, after grass in outlying pastures has dwindled.

“It’s an annual event,” said Art Thompson, who operates a car wash. “They traipse around and get everything dirty. …”

“Some think they’re quaint and cute, but if you hit one on the highway, it’s a different matter,” Thompson said.