Field Reports
NATIONAL MONUMENTS
Missouri Breaks debated
One of Montana’s leading land debates will be floodlit this week and into December as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management holds 11 public meetings on its disputed draft plan for managing the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.
At issue are the 377,000 acres the agency controls within the rugged and remote central Montana landscape added to the national monument system in 2001. Private property lies within the boundaries.
“The final plan will guide the monument for decades,” said Mary Jones, coordinator of Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument.
The Wilderness Society in Bozeman produced a monument brochure after finding the BLM did too little to familiarize the public with the place. “We’re not seeing a sense of direction from the BLM, a sense of distinguishing these lands from other BLM lands,”said society spokesman Will Patric.
Other critics of the plan say the BLM appears to be making the monument a de facto wilderness by advancing some land-use restrictions.
“It’s easy for them to say that livestock grazing will continue as before,” said Matt Knox, a Winifred rancher. “But it’s another thing for us to be faced with more restrictive classification of these lands.”
Recreation is a key issue for the American Watercraft Association. The BLM proposes banning personal watercraft on all but three miles of the Missouri River within the monument. That would leave about 145 miles off limits.
“We are concerned about fair and equal access, and we don’t want to see anyone discriminated against,” Chris Manthos said from the association’s office in Virginia.
Associated Press
URBAN WILDLIFE
Deer-feeding ban mulled
City commissioners in Helena are consider a ban on deer feeding.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks game wardens and some city officials have been pressing for a policy to deal with a growing deer population estimated at more than 300. Game wardens have shot eight aggressive deer in city limits this year, yet people are still putting out buckets of feed.
Under a feeding ban, violators would face $500 fine and jail time.
Associated Press
OUTDOORS MEDIA
Times dumps Outdoors
The Los Angeles Times announced last month that it is discontinuing its Outdoors section as a cost-cutting measure.
Times Editor Dean Baquet said he decided to cut the section in the face of higher newsprint costs, flat revenue, competition from the Internet and other pressures common to many newspapers.
Rather than cutting local, national and international news coverage, Baquet said he chose to eliminate “the feature section with the content that could most easily be shifted to other parts of the paper.”
The Outdoors section, which is produced by a staff of 10, was launched in September 2003. At the time, “it seemed like a perfect … section for Southern California,” said John Montorio, associate editor. But over time, the section failed to attract advertisers. “I’m very, very hopeful this doesn’t spell doom, and I think, in general, it won’t,” said Brett Pauly, who left his post as Outdoors editor for the competing Los Angeles Daily News in 2000 to work on electronic media. “But what kind of precedent does it set for outdoor sections across the land? “
Staff and wire reports
WILDERNESS MEDICINE
First responder course set
An intensive 80-hour wilderness first responder course will be offered Dec. 10-19 through Eastern Washington University in partnership with the National Outdoor Leadership School and the Wilderness Medical Institute.
For details, contact Sara Sexton-Johnson, 623-4353.
Rich Landers
WILDLIFE ENFORCEMENT
Drilling boosts poaching
Increased drilling activity in southwest Wyoming has resulted in an increase in poaching incidents over the past year, according to the state Game and Fish Department.
Last February, two men were convicted and another is being sought for poaching an antelope and a mule deer at a drilling rig near Baggs and then storing the meat in a freezer at the work site.
In another incident, a Colorado man who identified himself as an energy drill site worker was also investigated for poaching a mule deer buck north of Baggs.
And a former rig worker who now lives in Canada told Game and Fish officials about killing one buck mule deer and a buck antelope last October and driving over and killing four sage grouse while working for a contract drilling operation at a coal-bed methane well southwest of Rock Springs.
The incidents occurred in a company truck, during work hours, on the way to the drilling rig site and in close proximity to well pads, the man told game wardens.
He said employees also used a backhoe to dig a hole to bury a whole fawn antelope carcass that was either shot or deliberately run down with a vehicle.
Wildlife and oil and gas industry officials said they hope the poaching cases are isolated incidents, but they also worry it may become a growing problem in southwest Wyoming’s oil and gas fields.
“We don’t want this to become a real big problem, because there is so much energy development going on and there are so many people out on these winter ranges in these remote areas where wildlife is,” said Jay Lawson, Wyoming Game and Fish Wildlife Division chief.
Associated Press