Field Reports: Land donated on Montana’s Smith

Nearly 250 acres along Montana’s popular Smith River will be donated to the state by Missoula billionaire Dennis Washington, owner and founder of The Washington Companies.

The land in Cascade County will be used for at least one new boat camp to serve the thousands of people who float the 59-mile Smith River each year, said Jeff Hagener, director of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Currently, there are 27 boat camps and 52 camping sites along the river, a blue-ribbon trout stream that winds through limestone canyons in central Montana’s Little Belt Mountains. But most bordering land is private property and inaccessible to the public, said Attorney General Mike McGrath, who has floated the Smith nearly two dozen times.

The 240 acres is located between the Parker Flat and Paradise Bend boat camps and is valued at between $1.25 million and $1.5 million, said Mike Halligan, director of government relations for the Missoula-based Washington Corp.

The boat camp won’t likely be ready for the public until next year’s float season, Hagener said.

The Smith River is the only permitted river in Montana, requiring authorization for both public and private use. More than 5,000 people applied to float the river in 2007, and FWP granted 844 of those requests, state figures showed.

The float season typically runs from mid-April until July 4, depending on river flows.

Associated Press

HUNTING

West Side revives elk hunt

For the first time in more than a dozen years, hunters will be able to cull an elk herd that wanders through the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest and often crosses the line into Snohomish County.

A total of 30 permits to hunt bull elk will be issued — 15 to state hunters and 15 for tribal hunters, said Todd Wilbur, chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission’s Inter-Tribal Wildlife Committee.

State and tribal leaders are still working out details, Wilbur said.

A full report is expected to be released early next month, he said, before tribal hunters head outdoors in August. The state’s hunting season begins in September.

State and tribal leaders agreed to stop hunting the struggling Nooksack herd, which wanders through the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest and down into Snohomish County, in the early 1990s.

The herd dwindled from 1,700 elk in the early 1980s to fewer than 350 in recent years, according to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Two years ago, state and tribal wildlife managers worked together to capture about 100 elk from the Mount St. Helens herd, which is struggling to survive in an area that can naturally support only a fraction of the animals in the herd, and added them to the Nooksack herd.

Between the hunting ban and careful management, the herd has grown. The state estimates that it now numbers 450 elk or more, said Phil Anderson, an assistant director with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The tribes believe the herd could include more than 600 elk, Wilbur said.

The (Everett) Herald

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Moose becoming prairie home companions

Roger Johnson recalls showing a picture of a moose standing in a North Dakota sunflower field to some of his Canadian counterparts several years back, during a meeting of wildlife biologists.

“Most of the Canadian moose biologists couldn’t believe it,” said Johnson, big game supervisor for the state Game and Fish Department.

Moose, after all, were creatures of the woods and willows, regal animals most commonly seen with water lilies or other aquatic plants draped over their antlers or hanging from their mouths.

They certainly weren’t prairie dwellers, or at least they haven’t been, until recent years.

At a time when moose are disappearing from the landscape in northwestern Minnesota and “traditional” forest habitat in the Pembina Hills of northeastern North Dakota, moose are thriving on the prairie. From Grand Forks west to Minot and beyond, moose are finding North Dakota’s open country to their liking.

Ticks and other parasites, and the diseases they cause, likely are behind the decline in traditional areas. Perhaps they also are the key to why moose are attracted to changing farm practices that now favor row crops such as corn and sunflowers over traditional small grains on the prairies. Moose find the row crops to their liking. The Conservation Reserve Program, a federal initiative that pays farmers to take marginal land out of production and create wildlife habitat in its place, also could be a factor.

Most likely, Johnson says, it’s a combination of things.

Grand Forks Herald

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Bears’ hairdresser knows for sure

To pacify a Russian River danger zone where hundreds of anglers daily mingle with bears expecting to dine on human leftovers, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game plans to make over several grizzlies in bright shades of drugstore hair dye.

For public safety reasons, biologists have decided they need to kill bears that repeatedly intimidate people, area wildlife biologist Jeff Selinger said, and making it easy for people to know exactly which bear they encounter may avoid any wrongful executions.

Biologists plan to tranquilize several bears that frequent the area, give them a shampoo, bleach the hair around their heads, shoulders and hindquarters, and then apply yellow, green, orange or blue dye.

Soldotna-based wildlife photographer John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, groaned when he heard of the plan. “Who wants to take a picture of a clown bear?”

“This is their only chance at surviving,” Selinger said, acknowledging that it’s a controversial move that will change the way the public sees bears in this small area.

Big grinders will be installed along the river so anglers can avoid stockpiling fish carcasses that attract bears.

The U.S. Forest Service will enlist two seasonal protection officers to patrol the river and teach anglers about bear safety while ticketing those who move beyond arm’s reach of their lunches or fish stringers. Some bears have begun to learn backpacks and stringers also provide easy pickings if they can simply shoo away the two-legged owners.

Anchorage Daily News