City Desk
- Details
- Category: City Desk
By Mark Moran - Producer-Editor, Contact - News
Big Sky Connection - In an effort to protect a corridor for migrating grizzly bears and other animals, a coalition of wildlife advocates have sued the Bureau of Land Management over a 17,000-acre logging project in Montana's Garnet (GARR-net) Mountains. The bureau says the Clark Fork Face Project will reduce fire danger in the area. Comments from Mike Garrity, executive director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies.
Click on the image above for the audio. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management claims fire suppression tactics like large-scale logging would cause Garnet Mountains forests to grow back more densely. This 1898 photo of the forest shows it was thick and mature, decades before industrial logging was practiced. (Western Mining History)
Mark Moran
Conservation groups have sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to stop a logging project in Montana's Garnet Mountains.
Wildlife advocates said the project threatens a migration corridor for grizzly bears and other animals. The Clark Fork Face Project, about 30 minutes east of Missoula, would allow logging on nearly 17,000 acres of land overseen by the BLM.
Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said the effort would sever vital connectivity corridors for wildlife navigating between the Northern Continental Divide, Greater Yellowstone and Bitterroot ecosystems.
"The Garnet mountains are an important wildlife corridor for carnivores such as grizzly bear, lynx and wolverines," Garrity explained.
Despite the lawsuit, the BLM started logging in the Garnet earlier this week. Garrity noted the Alliance will ask the court for an injunction to stop clear-cutting until the case is decided. The BLM argued the project will improve forest health and reduce hazardous wildfire fuels across a majority of the area.
Garrity countered the Garnet Mountains are geographically critical to the grizzlies, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
"Scientists say for grizzly bears to be recovered, we once again have to have one connected population of grizzly bears in the northern Rockies," Garrity emphasized. "Otherwise, there's a big risk of inbreeding."
Garrity added the conservation groups plan to amend their complaint to also sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its role in the Clark Fork Face Project.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
by Tom Lutey for Montana Free Press
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., left, receives a hug from supporter Brianne Laurin during an election night watch party. Nov. 5, 2024 in Great Falls. Credit: MIke Clark / AP Photo
Outgoing senator criticizes campaign finance laws, highlights committee chairmanships.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester in a farewell speech to the Senate on Monday warned against campaigns becoming so bitter that lawmakers can no longer work together, blasting campaign spending laws a month after losing the most expensive race in Montana history.
The Montana Democrat is in the final weeks of his 18-year Senate career, having lost the general election to Republican Tim Sheehy, a political newcomer. Exiting members of Congress are given a chance to offer parting words. In the House, U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, chose not to. Rosendale didn’t seek reelection after two terms.
“Please listen to this. I have just been through the meat grinder. We need to do some campaign finance reform. Because of the campaign finance system in this country today, we have more division than ever. We are more paralyzed as a body to do policy than we ever have been before,” Tester said, faulting Supreme Court decisions equating unrestrained campaign spending with free speech.
“I despise these rules. I think they’re horrible. I think it allows candidates to stay underground and not go out and talk to people. And I’ll follow the rules. And I’ll go by the rules, and then I get criticized by the same people who voted to put those same folks on the Supreme Court. Crazy.”
With money still to be reported, spending on Montana’s U.S. Senate race surpassed $300 million, with Tester having a substantial campaign account advantage over Sheehy and an advantage in spending by third-party groups attacking the Republican.
Jon Tester bids adieu. (Click for video)
Sheehy did a limited number of interviews with local and national press, relying heavily on paid ads to promote his candidacy.
Tester also highlighted his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, both positions secured through seniority during his final Senate term. The PACT Act, of 2022, gave veterans medical coverage for exposure to toxic burn pits for the first time and extended coverage for exposure to agent orange, a jungle defoliate.
The senator from Big Sandy, first elected in 2006, said the CHIPS and Science Act, a 2022 bill to advance microchip manufacturing and science research in the United States, was another major accomplishment.
Tester encouraged lawmakers not to weaken defense spending.
“Address defense spending in ways that keep us safe, while holding our military and our contractors responsible. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, those threats are real. They’re doing some god-awful stuff. And we need to make sure that we have a military that will deter and hopefully never have to use it. But if we do, we win,” Tester said.
Tester credited his agricultural roots for making him the person he is, a grandson of immigrants who still lives on the family farm.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
Click on the image above for the audio.
PNS - Wednesday, December 11, 2024 - Debates on presidential accountability, the death penalty, gender equality, Medicare and Social Security cuts; and Ohio's education policies highlight critical issues shaping the nation's future.
- Details
- Category: City Desk
Click on the image above for the audio.
PNS - Wednesday, December 11, 2024 - Franklin Fire in Malibu explodes to 2,600 acres; some homes destroyed; Colorado health care costs rose 139 percent between 2013-2022; NY, U.S. to see big impacts of Trump's proposed budget cuts; Worker-owned cannabis coops in RI aim for economic justices.
