This Rain Barrel Workshop will provide community members with a sustainable way to water their garden! Workshop participants will have the opportunity to build and paint rain barrels that they can take home. Registration is $40 dollars and includes a complete rain barrel (normally sold for at least $100). Water conservation is crucial in Eastern Montana and a simple way to reduce the use of water is by recycling rainwater. Located at the Montana Audubon Center. Please bring a cordless drill, work gloves, and safety glasses if you have them.
The Billings Gardening for Wildlife program depends on community members like you. Whether it’s certifying your garden, encouraging friends and family members to certify their gardens, or volunteering for our outreach events, you can make a difference in Billings. Check out our upcoming events.
For decades, the Montana Wildlife Federation has been a leading voice for protecting and enhancing our public wildlife, lands, and access at the Montana Legislature. The 68th Montana Legislative Assembly convenes on January 2nd and will be, as always, a busy one for issues that affect wildlife, habitat, and access for sportswomen and sportsmen, and recreationists. View the Montana Wildlife Federation bill tracker for the most up-to-date information on bills and where they’re at in the process. Check out the MWF 2023 Legislative Toolkit for best practices, tips, and additional information.
The Montana Wildlife Federation for decades has been a leading voice for protecting and enhancing our public wildlife, lands, and access at the Montana Legislature. We need your help to make that happen in 2019.
MWF’s volunteers and staff are gearing up for the 2019 Legislature, and we need your help. Join ourLegislative Action Team to help move forward bills that affect our public lands, wildlife and access for all of us to enjoy them and fight against anti-access, anti-conservation proposals.
Legislative Action Team Members Will:
Receive insider updates and breaking news as bills are moving during the session.
Get previews of bills that are scheduled for hearings each week.
Have opportunities and expert help weighing in with your legislators on wildlife, habitat, and access priorities.
Help spread information to other conservation advocates and leverage grassroots action to make our collective voice heard.
In addition to our Legislative Action Team, MWF provides a bill tracker on our website for key wildlife bills and a weekly legislative update for all of our members.
Once again, MWF will be leading the effort to increase access to public land by raising the fine for illegally gating a county road to $500 per day. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of our work. MWF will fight for funding for Habitat Montana, support private landowner habitat and access programs, stand up for sound wildlife management, and defend funding for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. We’ll fight any attempts to privatize our public lands and wildlife or work to impede scientific wildlife management.
MWF has been at the Capitol for more than 50 years, and we have succeeded because our boots-on-the-ground volunteers all over Montana are willing to show up and speak up for what’s important to you. We can’t do it without you.Sign up to be part of our Legislative Action Team and get engaged. The threats to our shared wildlife and sporting heritage are greater than ever, and we can only win together.
Become a Member of our Legislative Action Team today.
Liz has found inspiration and solace in nature since her childhood in Virginia, where her family often hiked in the Shenandoah National Park. Since then, her twin passions of athletic activities and the outdoors have earned her a bachelor’s degree in athletic training from Ithaca College. Besides shaping her academic pursuits, Liz’s love of nature has driven her to seek out adventure — hiking to the summit of Mt. Whitney, skiing in the shadow of the Matterhorn, biking through the gorges of the Allegheny Mountains from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh, adventure racing internationally in Belize and Portugal. Her yearly visits with her parents to Lake Tahoe to ski and hike sparked a growing interest in environmental education as she learned of the intense and effective community involvement there to protect the lake and its environs. As a result, she is in the home stretch of obtaining a Master’s Degree in Resilient and Sustainable Communities from Green Mountain College and has also completed an 11-month AmeriCorps term as an education and outreach assistant with the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) in Incline Village, NV.
She returns to Billings to serve a six-month AmeriCorps term through the Montana Wildlife Federation. She is confident that her degree and the field experience she gained with TERC will enable her to help foster within Billings a love of the environment through community outreach. Beyond that, she hopes to inspire people to embrace healthier, more sustainable lifestyles through seemingly small changes in their daily actions to help preserve and protect our precious environment – for themselves and for future generations.
During her term of service with the Montana Wildlife Federation, Liz will be leading the Community Wildlife Habitat initiative. Under the Certified Wildlife Habitat programs, homeowners, businesses, schools, and other properties can receive recognition for landscaping practices that provide quality habitat for desirable wildlife, such as native birds, amphibians, and pollinators like bees and butterflies. These practices include reducing the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, conserving water, planting native plants, removing invasive weeds, and composting. The program enhances and restores wildlife corridors in urban and suburban areas, improves resistance to drought and other climate changes, conserves water, and makes the environment healthier for people — outcomes that benefit people and wildlife. So far, 26 homes, one school, and four common areas in Billings are already certified under the Certified Wildlife Habitat program.
The goal of the new initiative is to build upon those numbers and eventually to have the entire community certified. When that occurs, Billings will join Missoula, which was certified as Community Wildlife Habitat in 2017, and 95 other cities, towns, counties and neighborhoods across the nation. A city-wide certification is achievable through the eagerness of the residents to get their individual properties certified to create a healthier, greener, and more wildlife-friendly place to call home. By pursuing this status, Billings is sending a clear message about how much the community values wildlife, wild places.
Last week the Montana Wildlife Federation hosted Ales for Access at Thirsty Street Brewing Company. A diverse group of hunters, anglers, and conservationists showed up to support the Habitat Montana program. Habitat Montana is our state’s premier habitat protection and access program and has opened up thousands of acres of private and public land to public hunting and wildlife watching. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park are working on several quality conservation easements and important land purchases throughout Montana to continue to build on our conservation legacy. These include the Antelope Coulee project near Hysham and Sunday Creek north of Miles City.
These deals open up land for public hunters, improve wildlife management and create opportunities for public wildlife watching and fishing. In short, Habitat Montana is vital to our state. But these advances in access aren’t celebrated by everyone. Currently, Legislators and sitting Land Board members such as Corey Stapleton, Matt Rosendale, and Elsie Arntzen are looking at ways to weaken Habitat Montana or steal funding to pay for other programs. It’s critical that hikers, hunters, anglers, and birders show support for Habitat Montana as we move closer to the 2019 legislative session.
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.
