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MONTROSE — The country’s forests play critical roles, absorbing carbon and hosting natural resources such as water, but they will likely shrink as the human population increases, according to an update of a USDA Forest Service report officials say can aid in local forest management plans.

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The chief threat at that time was the New World Mine, proposed just outside Yellowstone near Cooke City. In 1996, the federal government bought out the interest of Crown Butte Mines, essentially eliminating the chance that the mine would reopen.

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The Missouri Wilderness Coalition has proposed asking Congress to designate 50,000 acres, mostly within the Mark Twain National Forest, as protected wilderness. A wilderness area allows the land to remain unspoiled by development and preserved for future generations.

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The Boise, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project said the Forest Service failed to consider the effects of livestock grazing in adopting the plan for the 1.1 million acre forest.

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Three senators from the Northwest have introduced a bill that would restore free public access to national forests in California and across the West.

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YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – Candlelight services at the park’s Mammoth Hot Springs Chapel are scheduled twice on Christmas Eve, but worshippers who’ve been there before know the passing elk and bison sometimes delay the services a bit.

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While the U.S. Department of the Interior, which includes the National Park Service, clearly owns most of the Old Mine Road, title to this small stretch — less than 300 yards long — is somewhat cloudy.

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Minnesotans care about the Great Outdoors, and most of us believe that it should be a high priority in the state budget. Fish and wildlife habitat, clean drinking water and air and parks and trails are as Minnesotan as Vikings and Twins games, summers at the cabin and our prairie and North Woods.

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But the biggest sticking point, critics say, is the way the agency divvies up the remaining 8.7 million acres of roadless land in Idaho, which is second to Alaska in having the most roadless national forest land.

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