Bears have been in the news a lot lately, because they’ve been getting into a lot of things lately.

As drought continues its grip on western Montana, berry crop failures are sending desperately hungry black bears into human environs with unusual frequency and boldness. 

This means that conflict-prevention measures are more important than ever, especially in places that may not be accustomed to the hungry bruins. 

And grizzlies as always are making front page news as fall sets in when we see the most human-bear conflicts annually.

On today's episode, Joshua Murdock, the outdoors and natural resources reporter at the Missoulian, talks about why this summer and fall have been especially tough for bears. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Montana’s fishing industry is an economic juggernaut, now accounting for one in five tourism dollars spent in the state and an estimated at $750 million annually. 

Fishing is important both economically and culturally, with communities built up near popular rivers to cater to locals and visitors. We also know that during low water and high temperatures, fishing can stress trout. To protect the resource, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks will restrict or even prohibit fishing. Some closures may last weeks or even months, and climate scientists predict that such conditions will only become more common in the future. 

On this episode, Tom Kuglin talks about a new study that looks at the economic consequences of climate change on Montana’s fishing industry. Who did the study and how have anglers adapted to these closures.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In early September news broke of a plan to re-develop Holland Lake Lodge. The proposal seeks to remove 10 aging structures and add 32 new buildings, including a new 28-room lodge, a new restaurant and 26 new cabins near the lake.

Originally built in 1924 and last updated in 1947, Holland Lake Lodge Inc. owns the buildings but leases about 15 acres of land from the U.S. Forest Service to operate under a special permit.

The proposal has drawn the ire of many and lead to countless letters to the editor and online campaigns against it.

On this episode Dave Erickson of the Missoulian newspaper helps make sense of what the future may hold for the north side of Holland Lake.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With pheasant season fast approaching, on this episode we are talking about a new program here in Montana that has stirred plenty of debate for the last year and a half.

Housed at Montana State Prison, inmates there are now raising pheasants for release on wildlife management areas. We attended the release of some of the first prison-reared pheasants at Lake Helena recently for the special youth season, but thousands were released across the state.

This week, Tom Kuglin of the Montana State News Bureau talks about the history of pheasants in Montana and why these releases are significant.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you have a problem with your neighbor, you’d try to work with them to sort it out, right? Or what if your neighbor’s friend was causing you issues? You’d probably ask your neighbor to talk to their friend about it, right? Well, that’s happening right now with British Columbia and Montana.

Contaminated water from coal mines in British Columbia is flowing into Montana, and it’s harming wildlife in both places that’s sacred to indigenous populations. But Canada, and the coal mining company, don’t seem to want to work with Montana and the U.S. to find a diplomatic solution.

On this episode Joshua Murdock, the outdoors and natural resources reporter with the Missoulian, discusses his coverage of the issue throughout the summer. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In mid-June historic floods ripped through Yellowstone National Park. Thousands of visitors were evacuated and the park was temporarily closed as officials assessed the damage.

Eventually, all but two entrances to the park were reopened. The North Entrance, near Gardiner, and the Northeast Entrance, near Cooke City, have been closed to the public all summer due to road damage caused by the flooding. Since then the Park Service has launched a heroic effort with federal partners to reopen the roadways.

On this episode, Brett French, outdoor editor for the Billings Gazette, talks about how those efforts are going and what the impacts of the park’s closing of the two entrances has had on the gateway communities of Cooke City, Silver Gate and Gardiner. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What’s Montana’s most loved river? The Smith? The Yellowstone? The Bitterroot? 

Well, if you measure love by usage it’s most likely the Madison.

Given angling pressure on the river, with rafts as prolific some days as caddis flies and with trout being hooked and released multiple times, many people believe something has to change.

For years now, both commercial outfitters and recreational anglers floating the river have expressed concerns that the Madison is being loved to death. There are fears that familiarity breeds descent in angler experience.

On this episode Duncan Adams, outdoor reporter for the Montana Standard newspaper, talks about the tensions between user groups and the river stuck in the middle.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This year the Scapegoat Wilderness marks its 50th anniversary. The 240,000-acre wilderness makes up the southern portion of 1.6-million acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and includes some great backcountry hiking and backpacking. Some of the most well-known locations include Scapegoat Mountain, Webb and Heart lakes and Red Mountain. 

But beyond the beauty of the landscape, the Scapegoat has a fascinating and important history that continues to have reverberations in land management policy today.

This week, Tom Kuglin shares his reporting behind a three-part series on the past, present and future of the Scapegoat wilderness.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It might surprise some to learn that Montana’s largest National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t contain a single mountain. Instead all 1.1 million acres of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, or CMR, consists of sweeping prairie encompassing the massive Fort Peck Reservoir and rugged, impassable badlands that spin the land into a labyrinth of gumbo hills and plummeting draws. 

But for all its rugged wildness, the refuge has not always stood as a pristine example of prairie grasslands and more than a century of western expansion, homesteading and ranching has left behind barbed-wire remnants of when the refuge was parceled out as ranchland years ago. But one conservation group, known as Keep It Public, alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field offices that oversee the refuge are hoping to remove those fence lines in a decade’s long effort to restore the refuge’s prairie to its untamed glory. 

On this episode, A.J Etherington, city editor of the Billings Gazette newspaper, talks about his time spent in the CMR reporting on work done by conservationists.

This podcast is created in partnership across five newsrooms – the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record, the Missoulian, the Montana Standard and the Ravalli-Republic. You can support this podcast and our efforts by subscribing. Visit any of these newspapers’ websites, and click on the Become a Member button at the top of the home page. We appreciate your support of local journalism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Inside a trench the length of a football field, against the mesmerizing backdrop of the Rocky Mountain Front lay a scattering of granite-hued bone fragments, each exposed for the first time after some 75-80 million years preserved in the Two Medicine Formation’s alkali powder. 

David Trexler, a lifelong resident of nearby Bynum, Montana, and paleontologist for a half-century calls it the most spectacular and complete bone bed he’s ever worked on. 

What Trexler knows so far is that many of the multi-species bones unearthed are from a new breed of duck-billed dinosaur.

Trexler sees more than the Earth’s distant past in dig sites like that along the Front He also connects the dots to an ominous outcome for humans humans don’t view what he describes as a “ticking time bomb” through a more holistic and urgent lens.

This week Jeff Welsch, editor of Lee Enteprises' Montana newspapers talks about discoveries of creatures of the past and Trexler’s theory about the future.

This podcast is created in partnership across five newsrooms – the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record, the Missoulian, the Montana Standard and the Ravalli-Republic. You can support this podcast and our efforts by subscribing. Visit any of these newspapers’ websites, and click on the Become a Member button at the top of the home page. We appreciate your support of local journalism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.