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The commissioners will hold a public hearing Tuesday at 7 p.m. to gather opinions to re-evaluate making the volcano a national park verus leaving it under the control of the U.S. Forest Service. The meeting is in the commissioner’s hearing room on the forth floor of the county’s Administration Building, 207 Fourth Ave. North, in Kelso.

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“Nearly half of the Southeast is in extreme drought and water supplies have reached critical levels in some cities,” says Michael Halpert, head of forecast operations at the official Climate Prediction Center.

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With the Montana elk population 12,000 above what the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (MFWP) says it should be, stagnant license sales and an every-increasing amount of private land closed to hunting, MFWP is hoping more hunters will take advantage of over 1,000 Block Management Areas (nearly 8.5 million acres) across the state this season.

Sometimes, we’re the good guys.

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These and other benefits could be altered by increased housing growth. The population of the United States is projected to increase by 135 million people between 2000 and 2050. Americans are moving closer to national forests and other public lands because of the amenities they provide. As a result, housing density is expected to increase on more than 21.7 million acres of rural private lands located within 10 miles of national forests and grasslands by 2030, according to a recent study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service.

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Revisions to a USDA Forest Service Plan are still being made. There are various public workshops scheduled in various Southern Arizona cities to allow residents to take part in updating the Coronado National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan.

Very interesting article by Cameron Naficy about the effect logging has on fires.

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Our work with University of Montana scientists has attempted to quantify the long term contributions that historical logging has made to forest conditions associated with today’s large fires. We have established a network of study sites throughout Idaho and Montana, scattered throughout the Frank Church/River of No Return, Selway-Bitterroot and Gospel Hump Wilderness Areas, the Salmon River of Idaho, and seven mountain ranges in Montana including the Salish, Swan, Coeur d’ Alene, and Bitterroot Mountains in the west and the Little Belts, Big Belts, and the Little Snowies in eastern Montana.

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A plan that will determine what uses are allowed on nearly 5,000 miles of roads and trails in the White River National Forest won’t be completed this year as planned, the U.S. Forest Service conceded this month

Quite a few grizzlies have been killed this hunting season in Montana. Unfortunately, two bears died in this scenario as the mother had a cub.

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Carl Haggar of East Glacier was walking along a steep ravine in dense timber late Tuesday morning when he saw a bear cub flee up the other side of the ravine. At the same time, the sow was climbing the ravine toward Haggar.