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My story from earlier this summer about the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission approving a set of 40-year conservation leases in eastern Montana pulled a wave of emails into my inbox. Readers wanted to know more about the funding source behind the leases, how much public access they’d guarantee, and what kinds of habitat potential and land conversion threats were involved.
Given that the primary goal of a conservation lease is to prevent property subdivision and development, readers also sought assurance that the one-time payment these lease agreements provide to landowners — sometimes millions of dollars depending on the size, location, term length and type of land involved — aren’t in effect using public dollars to pay landowners to hold off on development they weren’t intending to do anyway. Under that there was a larger concern: Are these conservation leases a good deal for Montanans?
It’s not, after all, a small program. FWP aims to put 500,000 acres of primarily prairie habitat into conservation leases over the next five years, spending between $35 million and $40 million of federal and state funds in the process. Most of the state’s portion of that funding will come from Habitat Montana, a decades-old program often described as the state’s “gold standard” for conservation. Since it was authorized by the Montana Legislature in 1987, FWP has used the license fees paid by nonresident hunters to establish dozens of wildlife management areas and put nearly 350,000 acres of private property under permanent conservation easements, which are similar to conservation leases but remain in effect in perpetuity as opposed to 30 or 40 years.
Open space is, of course, almost universally treasured across Montana — and widely perceived as threatened by the development driven by the state’s growing population. One of the most lasting tools to stave off the loss of open space is a permanent conservation easement. As retired land trust executive Bill Long told me, it’s a tool that can help ensure that our “grandkids’ grandkids” have the ability to appreciate brochure-worthy parcels of Big Sky country as they exist now.
But conservation easements do have some critics, too, including Chuck Denowh with the United Property Owners of Montana, who maintains that state-held perpetual easements are an unfair and “lopsided” trade because the landowner receives a one-time financial benefit for providing public access to a property in perpetuity. Others, such as Sen. Steve Hinebauch, the Republican from Glendive who sponsored an unsuccessful bill to restrict the state’s use of permanent conservation easements last year, note that “forever is a long time” to bind up a property from types of uses that may not currently exist in our collective imagination.
In that regard, the Montana Habitat Conservation Lease Program provides a kind of compromise between those who oppose putting additional land into FWP’s administrative domain for perpetuity and those who want open space and wildlife habitat protected. As to the question of whether it’s a fair compromise — well, that depends on who you ask. As is the case with so many land management concerns the state is grappling with, there are a whole range of attitudes regarding what’s too lax and what’s too restrictive. It’s my hope that my coverage can help you make your own assessment.
READ MORE: Habitat conservation in Montana undergoing a ‘sea change.’
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Campaign Trail 🗳️
Bozeman geared up this week not only for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Friday night rally at MSU’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, but also a three-day Bozeman Stampede professional riders rodeo, and a “Montana Freedom Rally” on Friday night at the Rialto, hosted by Democratic candidate for governor Ryan Busse. The Bozeman Public Library was also the stage for a 20-foot-tall inflatable IUD named Freeda, brought to town by Americans for Contraception.
On Bozeman’s northside Thursday night, the noise of the Stampede mixed with a street concert seven blocks away on Main Street. At sunset, the concert crowd screamed for an encore.
Earlier, on the South 19th Avenue strip, merchandise vendors scrambled to secure mannequins, Trump T-shirts and flags before a stiff wind carried them to Belgrade. That is, everyone but Bobby Jones.
Jones, of North Carolina, who has been working Trump rallies for five years straight, secured his table and hunkered down as his PVC flag poles flexed under the stress of the breeze. His canopy had already been removed, its frame anchored with guy wires.
The best-seller in Bozeman, Jones said, was a drab green “God, Guns and Trump” T-shirt with a downward-pointing flag silhouette and an AR-15 rifle.
A couple of Montana State University students stopped by. One, Ireland Abdo, bought a refrigerator magnet with a derogatory reference to the now-defunct Biden-Harris ticket. Jones hadn’t yet updated his wares with catchy barbs directed at the current presumptive Democratic presidential ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Abdo indicated Friday would be her first Trump rally, telling Jones she wasn’t sure when to show up for the 8 p.m. event.
He flashed her a concerned look, adding “There will be a long line in the morning.”
STAY TUNED: MTFP reporters will be in Bozeman for the Friday night rally, publishing coverage at montanafreepress.org Friday night or Saturday.
— Tom Lutey, Reporter
Wildlife Watch 🐟
The long-running, oft-litigated saga of the Arctic grayling population in the upper Missouri River basin took another step forward this week after a federal judge ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take a closer look at grayling population dynamics in the Ruby River and consider what will happen to grayling in the Big Hole river if a voluntary conservation agreement there isn’t renewed.
The ruling is the latest in a four-decade legal back-and-forth between environmentalists and wildlife agencies. While environmentalists have pushed for protecting the fish under the Endangered Species Act the USFWS hasn’t expressed consistent willingness to take that step.
Grayling advocates filed the most recent lawsuit last year, arguing that USFWS erred in its 2020 finding that the Upper Missouri basin Arctic grayling doesn’t meet a listing threshold. In part, the agency had argued the Big Hole population “is demographically and genetically stable and appear[s] to be responding favorably to conservation actions that have been implemented over the past several decades.”
The largest of the conservation efforts referenced is the Big Hole River Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, a group of property owners who’ve agreed to reduce their water withdrawals from the river to stave off a grayling ESA listing. In return for their voluntary participation in the group, the landowners are protected from stricter regulation in the event that grayling are listed as threatened or endangered in the future.
One of the claims the environmentalists made in the lawsuit is that the current water conservation agreement is set to expire in 2026 and won’t necessarily be renewed. U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen agreed in this week’s 53-page ruling, writing that USFWS “failed to consider the impacts of the agreement ceasing to exist in the foreseeable future.”
Pedro Marques, executive director of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, which supports the conservation group, said that piece of the ruling suggests that the agreement has been successful and should be broadened to other drainages in the basin where streamflows and grayling could use more support.
“What that says to me is ‘let’s renew this program and get these landowners signed on for another 10 years,’” Marquez said. “Then that issue goes away.”
Christensen also questioned whether the Ruby River, a couple of drainages to the east of the Big Hole, has a viable grayling population. He wrote that state biologists have demonstrated stocked fish are reproducing in the Ruby, but not that reproduction is happening among river-born fish.
He gave USFWS one year to further analyze that issue and the impact of the conservation agreement’s pending expiration.
Patrick Kelly with the Western Watersheds project described the ruling as “welcome news” for a fish “whose last native population in the lower 48 states barely hangs on in a small part of our state.”
Christensen dismissed the plaintiffs’ other claims regarding the adequacy of the government’s analysis on genetic diversity and the influence of declining streamflows and rising temperatures on grayling recovery.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Verbatim 💬
“The institutions that are designed to protect the rights of victims, to ensure that vicious killers are incarcerated, to deliver justice in Montana — those institutions failed my sister, failed my family, and failed this community.”
—Stephanie Mollet, sister of Danni Houchins, the 15-year-old girl slain at a Belgrade fishing access site in 1996, speaking at a July 8 press conference at the Gallatin County Detention Center.
Mollet, her family, and current and former investigators for the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office say the investigation into Houchins’ death was mishandled by the department for much of the past 30 years. The county coroner and state medical examiner initially listed the manner of Houchins’ death as “unknown” despite significant physical evidence that she was raped and suffocated with her face down in the mud.
Mollet urged the public to call on state lawmakers to do more to improve outcomes for victims of violent crimes and their families.
“We are not doing enough to protect women in this state from violent sexual crimes,” she said. “Be angry with me and turn your anger into action. You have an opportunity now to turn these painful events of the last 28 years into positive future outcomes. Call and write to your legislators. Demand adequate funding for the Montana State Crime Lab. Demand a new system of peer review for law enforcement when a violent rape and murder happens in their jurisdiction. Demand a centralized database of cold cases in the state. We must demand better for victims of sexual assault and murder in Montana.”
READ MORE: Gallatin County sheriff says 28-year-old cold case solved.
—John S. Adams, Editor-in-Chief
Following the Law ⚖️
The Montana Supreme Court this week closed the book on a long-running court case rooted in Montana State University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ruling that the university officials’ decision to halt in-person instruction and services in the spring of 2020 did not entitle a former student to refunded tuition and fees.
To recap: In fall 2020, now-graduate Anthony Cordero filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Butte alleging MSU breached a contract with him when it transitioned to remote classes in an effort to curtail the early spread of COVID-19. Within a few months, the case was refiled in Lewis and Clark County District Court, where Cordero demanded a partial refund of the tuition and fees he’d paid for the spring 2020 semester. Cordero argued the closure of campus facilities and cancellation of activities deprived him of opportunities guaranteed in student documents and marketing materials.
MSU countered the abrupt switch to remote instruction was intended to protect student health and safety and rebuffed Cordero’s assertion that his payments were “protected property.” Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Mike McMahon eventually ruled in MSU’s favor in August 2023, noting that the Bozeman flagship had continued to offer various services to students throughout Montana’s first pandemic spring. Cordero appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.
In its final opinion on that appeal Tuesday, a five-member panel of justices upheld McMahon’s decision, writing that Cordero was able to complete his spring 2020 courses and graduate despite the disruption. The panel further cited language from the campus’ course catalog it said “warns students that MSU reserves the right to change regulations, courses, and fees at any time.”
“Presumably, this encompasses the right to adapt its regulations and policies to protect its students, faculty, and staff in the event of an emergency, including a global pandemic,” the opinion continued. “Nowhere within the catalog does MSU expressly promise a refund or credit in the event it had to change its regulations to temporarily move online to protect students, faculty, and staff.”
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Fire Watch 🔥
High humidity and low temperatures slowed the pace of new fire growth in Montana toward the end of the week, enabling fire responders to quickly contain several new fires. The Grouse, Miller Peak and Black Mountain fires remain the three largest active blazes in the state.
The Grouse Fire spans 3,720 acres in Beaverhead County. The fire grew substantially over the past seven days. Rocky Mountain Team Three, a Complex Incident Management Team designed to combat major wildfires, took command at 6:00 a.m. on Friday. That morning saw slower fire growth and initial containment.
The Miller Peak Fire, first reported July 14, continues to burn sevenmiles southeast of Missoula. The blaze is now almost entirely contained. The number of personnel assigned to the fire shrank by about two-thirds in the past week.
The Black Mountain Fire covers 182 acres six miles northwest of Lincoln. A large team has almost entirely contained the fire since it was first reported at the end of July.
The statewide forecast for the coming week doesn’t look likely to bring increased fire danger. According to Jen Kitsmiller, a National Weather Service meteorologist based out of Missoula, the coming days offer high chances of moisture-heavy thunderstorms along with cooler temperatures and humidity similar to the tail end of the past week. Air quality remains good, but it could decrease as a result of wildfire smoke blowing into Montana from Washington, Oregon and northern California. After the weekend, temperatures will rise but remain cooler than the highs recorded in July.
SEE ALSO: MTFP’s summer 2024 fire dashboard.
—Zeke Lloyd, Fire Intern
On Our Radar 
Amanda — I’ve been appreciating how “The Entire Sky,” a new novel by Joe Wilkins, integrates familiar eastern Montana landscapes with a compassionate portrait of a teenager in crisis. It’s good stuff by Wilkins, who hails from the Bull Mountains northeast of Billings.
JoVonne — Earlier this week, Netflix released the first trailer for an upcoming movie, “Rez Ball,” directed by Navajo filmmaker Sydney Freeland and produced by NBA player LeBron James. The story follows a Native high school basketball team’s journey after the sudden death of a team member. Rez Ball is set to premiere Sept. 27.
Matt — Put this Tiny Desk (Home) Concert on repeat for a background to your day. Or sit down and watch the incredibly talented esperanza spalding perform with Brazilian artist Milton Nascimento.
Jacob — A U.S. District Court judge ruled this week that Google is a monopoly in the biggest ruling in antitrust law since the U.S. v. Microsoft ruling nearly 25 years ago. If the ruling survives appeal, Google could be split up like AT&T, although experts say this is unlikely, or forced to implement business changes like Microsoft was.
Zeke — The Phantom Tollbooth is a children’s book all adults should read. It offers a comprehensive guide to adventure, lessons on living and simple tips for better writing. Ultimately, it’s a book about inevitable, inexplicable and indispensable friendship, a commodity always in short supply.
Mara — An investigation published by the Powell Tribune in Wyoming identified a reporter at a neighboring newspaper, the Cody Enterprise, as having included fabricated, AI-generated quotes in his stories. The whole story reads like a futuristic nightmare — if only it actually was.
Eric — I’ve stumbled across some wild literary mashups in my time, but this one takes the cake: Some anonymous person on the Internet adapted the novel “House of Leaves” as a… custom map for the 1993 action video game Doom. (Here’s an hour-and-a-half-long video overview that is far more compelling than it has any right to be.)
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