As stress and anxiety have overwhelmed the news and media with needed updates and concerns about Covid-19 we hope you can find some solace in your social distancing through gardening.
The Montana Wildlife Federation in Billings has partnered with the National Wildlife Federation in a project called Gardening for Wildlife. Gardening has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety and we can give you tips on how you can garden to also help wildlife. Gardening for Wildlife has a goal of creating wildlife-friendly gardens throughout the city of Billings in order to combat quickly deteriorating habitat worldwide.
Here are some examples of what you can do in your own yard and home:
Start planning your garden and take the first steps!
Start the process to remove your lawn to decrease your water use
Too cold to start gardening outside? Start planting seeds for your summer garden indoors!
To fair the cooler weather some seeds such as lettuce, broccoli, peppers, cabbage, winter squash, onions, tomatoes, eggplant, and many others should be planted inside before they are transferred to your home garden
When you buy seed packets, check the back and it should let you know exactly how long each plant needs to be inside
Use small containers such as egg cartons to start seeds for a few weeks or months before you transfer them outside
If the seedlings grow too large for the egg cartons start moving them to larger pots. Last year’s pots you saved from the nursery or even coffee cans will work.
The National Wildlife Federation’s 4th annual EcoCareers Conference will be held online on April 1-2. The virtual conference will connect students and young professionals with wildlife and sustainability careers, educate attendees about related credentials and academic offerings, and inform them about trends in these emerging and exciting fields.
A newly released poll from the Montana Wildlife Federation shows that Montana hunters have serious concerns about Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) William Perry Pendley and the anti-public lands policies he has pushed for throughout his career.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages 250 million acres of public land across the West and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights. Since the beginning of 2017, the BLM has been managed by a series of temporary directors. Currently, William Perry Pendley is the Acting Director of the BLM. Pendley has a decades-long history of advocating for the sale or privatization of public lands, has conflicts of interests involving lawsuits with the Interior Department, and has fought against the multiple-use mission of the BLM.
According to the recently released poll, 78% of Montana hunters are concerned about the current Acting Director of the BLM, with 57% ‘very concerned’ and 21% ‘somewhat concerned.
Alec Underwood, the Federal Conservation Campaigns Director of the Montana Wildlife Federation, said the following:
“It is telling that nearly 80 percent of Montana hunters are concerned about the current director of the Bureau of Land Management. William Perry Pendley fought against public lands and the multiple-use mandate of the BLM for decades. Keeping Pendley in such an influential position with the BLM threatens the very places we hunt and fish, and the habitat needed for fish and wildlife to thrive there.”
The impacts of the current BLM director are shown in the Lewistown Resource Management Plan, which was recently released for public input. The final RMP leaves 95% of surface acres open for oil and gas drilling and development, jeopardizing access to public lands and key wildlife habitat. The poll shows that only 35% of Montana hunters agree with the Trump Administration’s push to open more lands to oil and gas development in the state, with 60% believing the amount should be kept the same or decreased.
Nearly all of the lands prioritized for oil and gas development in the Lewistown planning area have little to no potential for profitable oil and gas development, setting up the area to be a hotspot for non-competitive leasing. Under this process, companies are allowed to lease public lands that were not formally bid on in the leasing process for a small filing fee of $1.50 an acre which has ended up costing the state of Montana hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 10 years.
This newly released poll shows that 67 percent of Montana hunters disapprove of the non-competitive leasing process.
Tracy Stone-Manning, associate vice president of public lands for the National Wildlife Federation, said:
“Montana has lost out on tens of millions of dollars each year in lost revenue because of the federal government’s mismanaged oil and gas leasing process. It’s no surprise that 67% of Montana hunters disapprove of the non-competitive leasing process and it is time to come together to end this wasteful government process that solely benefits oil and gas companies.”
“These undeveloped, roadless landscapes are some of the most productive wildlife habitat in North America and should be protected for their wilderness characteristics and outdoor recreation hotspots that are important to Eastern Montana’s economy and way of life. Prioritizing these lands for oil and gas development and noncompetitive leasing is a waste of an inherently valuable resource,” said Aubrey Bertram, eastern field director for the Montana Wilderness Association.
Take Action Now: Help stop Pendley today by telling the Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, that we need a qualified individual to head the BLM. www.stopselloffpendley.com
The Lewistown Resource Management Plan has been in the works for over three years and is almost complete. The final resource management plan (RMP) and environmental impact statement were released on February 14th, 2020 and are now in a 30-day public protest period. This means if you submitted a comment on the RMP you have 30 days to submit a protest. Once this protest period is over the Record of Decision will be released and the plan will be finalized.
The proposed plan alternative has few modifications from its draft stage. It designates two new backcountry conservation areas (BCAs) adds back only two areas of critical environmental concern (ACECs), fails to protect over 200,000 acres with wilderness characteristics, and still leaves 95% of the planning area open to oil and gas development. The Interior Department’s chosen alternative removes the goal of preserving streams as wild and scenic rivers, fails to analyze the full impact of climate change, and opens the door for noncompetitive leasing of public lands for oil and gas.
Throughout the creation of this plan, the Department of the Interior ignored Montana voices, local Montanan communities, and even the BLM’s own experts on the ground. Local citizens – hunters, ranchers, school teachers, hikers, and wildlife watchers – advocated for spaces within this plan to be protected. Their voices were ignored in order to advance the Interior Department’s top-down “Energy Dominance” agenda. This destruction of the public process and blatant disregard for public opinion has become commonplace throughout the West.
The Lewistown planning area has a low potential for profitable oil and gas development. Having these areas open for oil and gas leasing means these parcels will not be bid on in a competitive manner. These parcels are not highly desirable and will end up being sold as non-competitive lease sales. This means that oil and gas developers will be paying a few dollars per acre to lease public lands. Given the habitat value of this region, the big game it supports, and the recreation-based economic benefits for local communities, leasing these spaces for a few dollars an acre is an insult to all Montanans and the values we have been taught for generations.
At the head of this issue is William Perry Pendley who continues to operate as BLM Director without Senate confirmation. The Lewistown plan illustrates exactly what happens when a political activist-lawyer like Mr. Pendley is installed into an important job without public transparency. Pendley has attacked the BLM and advocated for the sale of public lands throughout his career. Now as the head of the agency, he has followed through on his agenda of prioritizing oil and gas over public access and wildlife habitat on over one million acres of public land in Central Montana.
If you are interested in submitting a protest or writing to your local newspaper and have questions please contact our Eastern Field Coordinator at mpetrich@mtwf.org.
More than 1,200 elk hunters have spoken up to call for more public hunting access to achieve better elk management in a statewide survey. The Montana Wildlife Federation has been conducting the Montana Elk Management Survey for several months to gauge hunters’ attitudes toward different approaches to elk management and found a strong desire to improve access during the five-week general season to help address game damage to private lands, push elk onto public lands and help get a better harvest of elk when the most hunters are in the field.
Eight in 10 respondents said in the survey it is very important or important to increase public access for hunting during the general season to achieve better elk management. Montana has the longest general rifle opportunity for deer and elk in the West, with a five-week season. For decades, public hunting during the general hunting season has been the primary management tool for elk and Montana hunters said they want to maintain that and return to an emphasis on the five-week season.
Another finding showed that nine out of 10 Montana hunters said maintaining high ethical standards in elk hunting is very important or important in the future of elk management.
“This survey indicates that Montana elk hunters are nearly unanimous in their desire for FWP to manage elk through public access and public hunting,” said Dave Chadwick, MWF Executive Director.
Last week the Montana Wildlife Federation submitted these comments to the Fish and Wildlife Commission on the proposed 2020-21 elk shoulder seasons. Hunters want to see the Commission honor the agreement made five years ago when these performance-based seasons were started, and scale back these seasons in areas where they’re not meeting the criteria. Download our comments and take the MWF elk management survey.
Read our comments below.
Dear Chairman Colton and commissioners, The Montana Wildlife Federation is our state’s oldest and largest state-based wildlife conservation and sporting organization, with 84 years of work on key wildlife, habitat and access issues. We work to solve the complex issues surrounding our public trust wildlife resources and have decades of achievement in finding practical solutions to these complex issues.
MWF thanks the Commission for making significant changes to the proposed 2020-21 elk hunting seasons as proposed by FWP staff. However, the performance based “shoulder seasons” that began in 2015 as a pilot project have grown to 58 districts and have a mixed record of achieving the intended results as laid out in the performance criteria.
Those criteria were an agreement between FWP and the hunters of Montana to measure the actual effectiveness of these hunts. They stress throughout that they’re not meant to be permanent, and not meant to replace general season harvest, which should be the primary management tool we use for wildlife. That’s essential for numerous reasons, including the ethics of when we hunt animals, the effectiveness of spreading out wildlife across the landscape to have equal opportunity, and the need to get our elk harvest when the most hunters are in the field. That’s a lesson we learned decades ago, and yet it appears FWP staff was moving back toward a reliance on late seasons to address elk herds in areas where the vast majority of hunters have little access during the general rifle season.
One of the fundamental objectives of shoulder seasons was to reduce exclusive access to elk and to see a corresponding increase in general season harvest. In some areas that has worked out, but in other areas exclusive access to elk has increased. FWP’s analysis shows that an increase of more than 1 million acres of exclusive access to elk has occurred since 2015. Increased harvest limits and longer seasons are not solutions if the primary problem of exclusive access is not addressed. The department needs to increase its efforts in working with landowners to find a solution to the access issue before continuing or proposing elk shoulder seasons.
In areas where the shoulder seasons are meeting the criteria, MWF will support their continuation. But it’s essential that these do not become the season structure of choice in perpetuity. Shoulder seasons are just one tool that can be used to get elk populations to objective. In the areas where the shoulder seasons are not meeting the criteria, they need to be discontinued and FWP needs to try something else. We are encouraged by the move made by the Commission to try a license/permit type that is valid in the general season and for the month of December in those districts.
We offer the following shoulder season comments by FWP region:
In Region 1, those districts represent some small land ownership, and do not appear to be facilitating exclusive use of elk. We do not oppose their continuation.
In Region 2, we commend FWP for making considerable changes in the proposed tentative seasons in an effort to get away from the late shoulder seasons in most districts. Three of the districts still proposed to hold shoulder seasons represent small land ownership, and we again recognize the difficulty in managing elk there. The other two, in the Blackfoot Valley, appear to be meeting the harvest criteria.
However, FWP is still proposing shoulder seasons in districts at or even below objective. That does not meet the original intent and we do not support their continuation. We would propose a potential license or permit type to address game damage in areas before the general season, as well as a revamp of the game damage hunt structure to allow biologists to get hunters on the ground quickly and effectively to push elk out of hayfields and prevent damage.
Region 3 has largely stayed away from shoulder seasons, and continued with its management and damage hunts. That is a model for the rest of the state.
Regions 4 and 5 have the most widespread use of shoulder seasons and access to elk is extremely difficult. Exclusive access to bull elk hunting has increased by more than a half million acres and exclusive access to cow elk hunting by more than 400 thousand acres since 2015. Many of these districts were not meeting the criteria and we are supportive of the department’s move to end those shoulder seasons in search of something else. The LPT proposed is another attempt to try a different season structure that helps address elk populations, but as usual will only work if landowners work with the department and hunters to craft access programs that help not only kill more elk, but also redistribute them back onto public lands where hunters have more access to them. We suspect that landowner tolerance has changed substantially since population objectives were established and we encourage the Department to engage with the large landowners where exclusive access to elk hunting occurs to find more equitable means of access to the public elk.
MWF supports continuation of the shoulder season in Hunting District 445, the Devil’s Kitchen, until that time that population objectives are meet. This area is a model of a collaborative effort between FWP, landowners, outfitters and hunters to craft a season structure that focuses on a strong general season harvest. We would, however, propose a modification to the shoulder season that would end the season on Dec. 31. Additional harvest of cow elk after that point would be covered under a revamped game damage hunt structure that would allow biologists to get hunters on the ground quickly, less than 24 hours.
Region 6 has been more limited in its use of shoulder seasons as well, and we are glad to see some moves to dial them back. Again, we would like to see any districts not meeting the harvest criteria try something different.
The 2005 Elk Plan established population objectives for elk herds throughout Montana. It was presupposed that the Adaptive Harvest Management approach would provide the tools necessary to accomplish those objectives. One of the realities in attempting to manage toward objective is the fact that de facto refuges exist in many hunting districts. In these cases, the 2005 Elk Plan states, “Elk occupying these refuges may be counted separately and sub-objectives established that could be operative if access negotiations are successful.” Further, the Elk Plan established a process to amend those objectives (page 59). The ongoing Elk Plan rewrite should include that process to separate manageable elk from elk that are largely unavailable for management.
Finally, we would like to point out that the use of an antlerless-only hunting season on the general elk license is often referred to as a radical proposal. In fact, FWP is already utilizing this structure, with limited bull elk permits, in HD 217. Such a structure in other areas that are grossly over the objective is worth consideration, at least for one or two seasons.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment. We are encouraged that the Commission continues to look for ways to meet their public trust responsibilities through increasing public hunting opportunity of our elk during the general season while addressing landowner concerns.
Sincerely,
Tom Puchlerz
MWF President
Jeff Lukas
Elk Campaign Manager
Jeff Lukas is a passionate conservationist who has been fishing and hunting his entire life. Whether it’s floating a small stream chasing trout, pursuing elk in the high country, or waiting in a blind for ducks to set their wings, Jeff is always trying to bring more people afield to show them what we are trying to protect. He loves being in the arena, and he will never shy away from conversations about the beautiful and unique corners of Big Sky country.
