The hatchery-raised Arctic grayling burst from the 5-gallon bucket and darted to search for a secure new home in French Creek.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries technician Lance Breen releases Arctic grayling into French Creek during a repopulation project last fall in the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area near Anaconda.Â
A wildfire south of Wise River briefly stirred community anxiety. The Wise River Club and the nearby H Bar J Saloon and Café joined forces to feed the wildlands firefighters working the Grouse fire.
Cattle are herded down the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway by U.S. Forest Service personnel and local ranchers as the Grouse fire burns in July in the West Pioneers southwest of Wise River.
Controversy continued about declining trout populations in the renowned Big Hole River. A crew led by Jim Olsen, a fisheries biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, conducted electrofishing surveys on four sections of the river to get counts of brown and rainbow trout, providing both a glimmer of hope and the netting of more fretting.
Fish, Wildlife & Parks fisheries biologist Jim Olsen walks along French Creek during an Arctic grayling repopulation project last fall in the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area near Anaconda.Â
Environmental groups sought to stop the Pintler Face timber project, something a federal judge declined to do. High school students toured one portion of the project and watched as a feller-buncher gathered lodgepoles like a bouquet of flowers, according to one youngster. Â
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Sun Mountain Lumber's Sean Steinebach, at left, inspects an increment borer sample of a lodgepole pine with wildlife advocate Chris Marchion in June in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
Beavers slapped their tails in the spectacular Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge as fisheries crews notched the animals’ dams to foster passage of spawning Arctic grayling.
An angler walks a trail near Upper Red Rock Lake in the remote Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in April.Â
In short, it was life as usual in southwest Montana during the past 12 months — except, of course, for the ongoing drought, the pitiful snowpack and trickling river flows. If James Taylor wrote a song about the summer of 2024, it would have featured fire without rain.
A mule deer looks up from grazing at the corner of Sycamore and 4th Streets in Anaconda in mid-July. Anaconda-Deer Lodge County formed an urban wildlife task force to consider ways to intervene with pesky deer in town. Â
There was talk of cloud seeding. There was a respectable earthquake. Mule deer and black bears hassled residents of Anaconda.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks conservation technician Lucas Bateman nets a fish while performing an electrofishing survey on the Big Hole River in April.Â
It was a rich and trying 12 months. No one seems to be moving away as newcomers descend. It was life as usual — enhanced by wildlife, public lands and scenery that thrills but can't be chewed. Â
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks conservation technician Lucas Bateman attaches a tag to a trout while conducting an electrofishing survey on the Big Hole River in April.Â
A section of a clearcut within the Pintler Face timber project as seen in June in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.Â
