Senator Jennifer Fielder, Thompson Falls, angered by Washington state for stopping trapping on public lands, came to Montana to trap. Montanans attempted to stop trapping on public lands, that angered her. She, RMEF and the NRA tried to pass legislation in the 2017 legislature to prevent that from ever happening and a new bill would also put aside land owner rights for trappers, hunters and sportsmen (?). A half million dollars was put up by these three to chain the hands of Montana people. (Is this conflict of interest?) The bill was killed but Senator Daines has picked it up. Read his bills very carefully.
Fielder is the CEO of the American Lands council, which represents groups of people that want to get control over the public lands of the West. (look up American Lands Council on the internet. Senator
Steve Daines ran as a moderate Republican, he got elected, then decided he was more closely tied to Tea Party. Do you remember that?
Then we have Ryan Zinke, who lies but doesn’t think he is lying, he is just trying to be somebody important. (Flies around in taxpayer-owned helicopter to go horseback riding, etc.). He’ll never sell off our public lands, unless he finds the highest bidder and gets? Fill in the blanks.
If Gianforte is in on this, he too is a liar. Assaults a reporter then lies about it.
The mantra of the GOP is, “If we don’t manage our forests they will manage us.”
Couple of years ago, we had rain off and on all summer and into the fall. No fires, a lot of growth. The most beautiful summer I can remember for a long time. Followed by a year of drought and extreme heat = fires, followed by this last year of 90 days of extreme heat, drought, wind and mega fires.
My point is, God can take care of our mega fires. The GOP wants to “manage” it, which usually means clear cut and sell it off. Clear cutting makes things worse. Experience your own garden, yard. Don’t water your grass.
I just point out to you, wilderness areas do not need managing, the State of California is well managed and that did not stop drought, wind, wild fires. The worst fires ever. The Soda Springs fire in Idaho burnt thousands of acres, it was sagebrush, prairie and cheat grass. Cheat grass comes on with disturbance (cattle roamed the area.) (This fire burned in the 80’s.) Eastern Montana was pasture. Fire was burning alongside the freeway.
In Lolo it was drought, extreme heat and wind. Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas were also on fire. The point is, drought, wind and many days of extreme heat are going to give us mega fires. They seem to be where you find concentrations of man. We kill off the beaver, nature’s firefighters, we build where we shouldn’t, then we don’t want wildlife to be too close to us, they eat our gardens and we don’t like that. We interfere with and destroy ecosystems and can’t understand why things backfire, perhaps climate change might have something to do with it. Or we can all spit in the wind and see what kind of results we get. Just saying.
Talking with a scientist rather than a politician or a business man would be a good start.
J. Ward
Lolo