Stay classy, Wyoming.

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According to Glacier National Park officials the deer approached the woman and she fired bear spray at it. When she realized the deer was too far away, she pulled out a .357 and shot it towards the ground. The hiker received a written warning.

I’m not a big fan of allowing firearms in the national parks. There are several reasons for this. For me, its easier to see wildlife in the national parks and thus easier to poach. personally, I have always found powerful handguns displayed on belts to be a bit much at tourist attractions. Let’s face it, this isn’t western-world anymore. If you have a gun, great. But the rest of the world doesn’t need to fear you. Obviously the exception here is law enforcement.
The final reason is that it is my intrinsic belief that guns cheapen life. Now this doesn’t mean that guns are “evil”, what it does mean is that it’s far easier to kill that rare animal far from its claws, its teeth and its eyes. We don’t get to feel the breath of it. We are removed from the process and this makes it easier when perhaps we should be putting a little more thought into our actions. We’ve already seen one grizzly bear death in Denali from the new gun law.

Death by grizzlies in Glacier are so rare that walking around with a .357 is a bit silly. Not to mention that bear spray works just as well.

Anyway, its good to be back. I missed this place. I hope to continue to push some of your buttons, to make some of you applaud, and of course to learn from you.

I was planning on a redesign but I’m still buried in big projects, and am currently planning a multi-park tour this summer across the west from California to Montana. The updates will be few to start with, but they will grow.

RIP Stewart Udall.

Stewart Udall served as Secretary for eight years (1961-1969) under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, during which time he successfully pressed for landmark environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Wilderness Act, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Under his watch, the National Park Service added over 2.4 million acres to its holdings,

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Interesting news. Was this supposed bear attack recorded? Would the bear have been shot if Wayne Bosowicz had a firearm in his posession? There’s no mention of bear spray here, which has been proven by top studies to be more effective and safe for deterring bears.

I guess we will find out in a more general sense this summer what exactly people will do when they feel a bear “gets too close” this summer.

But Wayne Bosowicz, a seasoned hunter and licensed guide from Sebec, said Wednesday that he wished he’d been allowed to carry a gun when a bear confronted him in Yellowstone National Park two years ago.

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I know this really isn’t news to a lot of my western friends who don’t see what the big deal is with guns. But many people east of the Mississippi and west of the Rockies understand that when you get too many people with too many guns in small areas, bad things happen. Of course it’s not the gun’s fault. It’s the fault of people who don’t or can’t use common sense(or of course just violent people).

There’s a big difference between a guy hauling around a rifle in his pickup truck in Big Timber MT population 800, and a guy riding with a glove box pistol in northern Chicago as 1,000 kids just get out from school. I’ve always felt gun control issues should be local and based on population densities. As for the national parks, I will most definitely side with the anti-gun crowd on this issue. There are way too many “easy shots” in these places. Before guns, national parks had the lowest crime rates in the nation. There was never any real reason to allow guns back in. The system was functioning perfectly.

I also base my opinion on behavior I have seen in the national parks. I don’t what the exact cause is, but some people get a little rowdy once they get into the wide open spaces. We all feel considerably more freedom when entering our great and wild public lands. However, in some people this sense of freedom dissolves into recklessness. I know it, I’ve seen it.

On top of this, my main concern is for endangered animals. I feel we may see several situations in which a “grizzly bear got too close” and was gunned down by a hiker. The problem with that is everyone has a different definition of “too close”. And to be perfectly honest, most people who carry guns are simply people who are more frightened. The act of carrying a gun eloqently conveys this. The people carrying guns are probably going to have a definition of “too close” that would not really be that close at all. A heightened sense of fear to begin with being the primary reason for that definition.

I wish our ranger friends in the National Park system the best of luck in adapting to the strange new rules.

This is huge news. There has been a long battle over mining in this area for quite some time. The Northfork is beautiful country and deserves the protection. It is essentially the wildest lower elevation land in the lower 48. I would prefer much of this area be designated as national park and be joined with Waterton/Glacier, but that’s not going to happen at this point. This is the best we can hope for now.

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