Category Archives: Montana

Building in the “Fire Plain”

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Rivers have floodplains. We are starting to learn that the floodplain needs to do its thing — flood — for the surrounding natural systems to work. With all the attention that this year’s wildfires are getting, there is a little more attention being paid to not building where fire needs to do its thing.

Here’s an very brief opinion piece in the Helena Independent Record calling for blocking development in the “fire plain.”

Given that there are entire ecosystems that are fire-dependent, is it possible to designate a “fire plain”? Three years ago, Texas Forest Service GIS Specialist Karen Ridenour won a Firewise Leadership Award for investigating just that question. Here’s the press release on her award, with links to follow for more info.

Photo of prescribed burn in the Black Hills of South Dakota by Terry Tompkins, courtesy of US Forest Service

Prairie Chicken and Sage Grouse Reintroductions

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Male greater prairie chickenGreater prairie chickens are booming again this spring in Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie, Missouri. The species had been extirpated from the area until five years ago when the Missouri Department of Conservation translocated some greater prairie chickens from Kansas.

State biologists studying the birds have learned a lot about their habitat needs and have been surprised by the interplay between the donor population back in Kansas and the newly-established Missouri population.

The restoration offers hope to other states and regions trying to restore the greater prairie chicken, which is an endangered species in Missouri, when there is limited habitat available.

Read more in the Missouri Department of Conservation press release, here.

In Alberta, Canada, a two-year project to relocate some 40 sage grouse from Montana appears to be successful, says an article in the Calgary Herald. Human development, including oil drilling, had nearly wiped the species out in the province. Last year, poor weather hurt the reproduction of the introduced birds, but this year biologists believe the birds are nesting.

Read more in the Calgary Herald.

The key word mentioned in both reintroduction stories: “hopeful.”

Photo: Male greater prairie chicken courtship display, courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

4th International Human-Bear Conflicts Workshop

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Didn’t make it to the sold-out 4th International Human-Bear Conflicts Workshop, that started on March 20 and ends today in Missoula, Montana? The Missoulian has a brief round up, aimed at general readers. (Who knew that round doorknobs could be such a successful bear deterrent?)

If you want more info on human-bear conflicts, an excellent summary of the 3rd International Human-Bear Conflicts Workshop (November 2009) is on-line.

More on the conference from the Missoulian: an article on a presentation on electricity (fences, mats) as a bear deterrent. Read it here.

Photo: Black bear courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

March Wildlife Disease Roundup

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Things have actually been pretty quiet over the past month when it comes to wildlife diseases. The big news, of course, is white nose syndrome in Alabama, but there have been a few other stories worth noting.

Rabbits can get prion diseases. Once it looked like they were immune to diseases in the family of mad cow and chronic wasting disease, but the latest research shows they can get it. (See the original paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

At least one frog species, the Pacific chorus frog, is a carrier of chytrid fungus, a recent study found. Read the LiveScience story via MSNBC. The study was published recently in PLoS ONE, read it here. Or read the San Francisco State University press release, here.

A wolf suffering from parvovirus was discovered in Idaho. Parovirus effects all canids, including domestic dogs. There is a vaccine for the disease available for dogs. Read the Idaho Department of Fish and Game press release here.

Also, there has been an outbreak of canine distemper in gray foxes in Michigan.

For birds:
The red tides on the Gulf coast of Texas have caused the deaths of redhead ducks.
The death of eider ducks on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) has been pinned on a virus, named Wellfleet Bay virus.
Ten wild turkeys were found dead from avian pox, a virus, in southeast Montana.

Finally, back in late February, brucellosis, a cattle disease, was found in elk in Montana.

Photo: A Pacific chorus frog. Credit: Joyce Gross

Mountain Goats Threaten Bighorns in Tetons

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Mountain goats were introduced to the greater Yellowstone region decades ago, say articles in the Missoulian and the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Since then, the goats have popped up in various locations around Jackson Hole, Wyoming Game and Fish wildlife biologist Doug Brimeyer said in an article in the Missoulian.

“In the Tetons, the bighorn sheep winter habitat is a relatively few isolated wind-swept slopes at high elevation, because they’ve lost their migration,” Wyoming Game and Fish habitat biologist Aly Courtemanch said in the Missoulian article. “They’re already surviving on this marginal winter habitat up there.

“It’s reasonable to expect that mountain goats, if they became established, would out-compete bighorn sheep for that very limited winter range.”

Researchers from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are studying the situation, lead by Bob Garrott, of Montana State University’s Fish and Wildlife Ecology and Management Program.

The team will collar 12 goats with a GPS system that will send location data every six hours for two years. A second collar will activate when the GPS collar falls off and will provide less detailed information.

Read the Missoulian article here.
Read a shorter version of the story in the Billings Gazette, here.

There’s no link to the Jackson Hole News & Guide story that kicked off this flurry of coverage, because it doesn’t appear to be available on the newspaper’s website.

Photo: Bighorn in Montana. By Ryan Hagerty, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Fish + Fire = Comeback

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We won’t blame you if you think that the combination of fish plus fire equals dinner. But a recent study in the Intermountain West confirms earlier findings that native fish, particularly native salmonids, thrive in the decades after a forest fire.

The study was published in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. To read the paper, go to this US Forest Service summary page, then click on the PDF link.

A US Forest Service fisheries biologists has continued the study, and is giving talks on the results. Read the article about his talks in the Ravalli Republic.

As for fish and fire: sure, the first few years after a forest fire are tough for the fish. But the introduction of trees into the stream is such a habitat boost that after a few years, native fish populations start to grow. Shrubs and other low plants growing streamside also provide food and shelter for native fish.

This Bitterroot Mountain study confirms the findings of studies done after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, that also found that native fish populations rebounded after the fire.

You can read an article on the talk, here.

Photo: Brook trout, like this one, don’t fare well after fires in the Intermountain West, because they are not native and therefore not adapted to the region’s fire-fueled ecology. Photo by , courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife ServiceEric Engbretson

EHD Impacts Deer Population in Northern Plains

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According to the Associated Press, epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) has killed 90 percent of the white-tail deer along a 100 miles stretch in northeastern Montana. Other outbreaks were recorded in the Northern Plains states of North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and Kansas.

The outbreak lead to a reduction in the number of white-tail hunting tags available in Montana, and a refund for tags already sold in North Dakota.

A wet spring and summer, plus a warm autumn meant that the biting midges that spread the disease were particularly numerous in the region this year.

Read the entire Associated Press story via the Yahoo! news site, here.

The silver lining, the article says, is that streamside cottonwood groves may be able to rebound while the white-tail deer population is in decline.

Photo: A biting midge, courtesy of USDA

EHD Impacts Deer Population in Northern Plains

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According to the Associated Press, epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) has killed 90 percent of the white-tail deer along a 100 miles stretch in northeastern Montana. Other outbreaks were recorded in the Northern Plains states of North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and Kansas.

The outbreak lead to a reduction in the number of white-tail hunting tags available in Montana, and a refund for tags already sold in North Dakota.

A wet spring and summer, plus a warm autumn meant that the biting midges that spread the disease were particularly numerous in the region this year.

Read the entire Associated Press story via the Yahoo! news site, here.

The silver lining, the article says, is that streamside cottonwood groves may be able to rebound while the white-tail deer population is in decline.

Photo: A biting midge, courtesy of USDA

More Disabled Hunter Permits Mean Fewer Elk in Montana

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The elk population in some areas of Montana is being reduced by the abuse of disabled-hunter permits, which allow the holders to take cow elk, says the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks commission chairman in a recent Associated Press article.

Look for the quote buried in the story’s seventh paragraph. This is mostly a story about the abuse of the permits, sort of a healthy people parking in handicapped spots story of outrage, but with disabled-hunter permits in place of the convenient parking space.

According to the article, the abused loopholes seem to be the ability walk 600 yards carrying 15 pounds and the ability to carry 25 pounds. Lots of people who are just out of shape, and not handicapped at all, can’t do these things and can get a doctor’s note to prove it.

Read the Associated Press article for more details.

Photo: Cow elk and calf, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Good News for Trumpeters in Montana

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“Something went right” on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwest Montana. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have been re-introducing trumpeter swans there for more than a decade. This year the reservation was home to eight breeding pairs, just short of the tribes’ goal of ten breeding pairs. Over 100 cygnets have been hatched on the reservation during the program.


The program’s success was in the spotlight this week when the Trumpeter Swan Society held a conference in Montana.

Read the story in The Missoulian here.


Background on the trumpeter swan from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s All About Birds.

Photo: Alaskan trumpeter swans. Photo by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.