Around Crystal Creek, where the road bridges the Lamar River at the fringe of Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley, a grove of aspens has new life. In 1997, the first year scientists began systematically measuring the park’s aspen population, the stand consisted of towering, century-old trees with no fresh growth in the understory.

Today, the scene is dramatically different. A thicket of young aspens now blankets the ground. Many of the saplings are already taller than the researchers who study them. The grove is not only denser, it expanded its footprint.

Crystal Creek has become synonymous with the ecological benefits of wolf restoration. It’s home to one of the pens where wolves were kept during their 1995 reintroduction, and it’s also a hotspot where aspen growth has surged over the past three decades. 

Quaking aspens grow in colonies, sending up genetically identical shoots from a shared root system. In much of the 1900s, massive elk herds devoured virtually every new aspen shoot that broke through the soil, stifling the growth of new trees.

But shortly after the 1995 wolf reintroduction, the elk population fell and some aspen sprouts slipped past the hungry herbivores. While a flood of news articles, Facebook posts and YouTube videos have attributed the change to wolves, scientific evidence for this conclusion is limited. And some scientists believe that aspen regrowth in the park has been exaggerated. 

BEFORE WOLF RESTORATION

The idea that canines protect Yellowstone’s aspens from herbivores dates back at least a century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, rangers in the park shot hundreds of wolves, bears, cougars and coyotes in a bid to boost deer and elk numbers. In 1926, the same year park rangers wiped out Yellowstone’s last wolf pack, biologist Edward Warren was already warning that the carnivore purge was harming the park’s aspen groves.

“There has doubtless been a great increase in the number of beaver in the Yellowstone Park of late years,” he wrote in his 222-page report. “When over two hundred coyotes are killed in a single season, as in 1922, the animals which formed part of their food are bound to profit by it and to increase in numbers. The result has been what is probably an unnatural expansion of the beaver population.”

Warren went on to describe what zoologist Robert Paine would 54 years later call the “trophic cascade.” The expanded beaver population had chomped down nearly all of the large aspen trees near the streams and ponds of Tower-Roosevelt. While thickets of young sprouts remained, most trees near beaver dams with a trunk greater than two inches had become food or building material.

By 1955, both beavers and aspens had disappeared from the ponds and creeks of Tower-Roosevelt. Beavers had chewed down the old trees, while the soaring elk population had consumed the young ones, suggested William Barmore, a park biologist who studied the park’s elk herds. Aspens continued to survive beyond the beavers’ reach, but these groves, which Barmore described in a 1965 research report, looked very different from the ones Warren photographed.

“In most stands the only aspen age classes present were decadent, overmature trees and root sprouts from one to a few years old that were browsed off to a height of one or two feet each winter,” Barmore wrote. He noted that hungry elk chomped down on aspen shoots each winter when grass was scarce, preventing any sprouts from becoming mature trees. 

An individual aspen seldom lives more than 200 years. Without successful regeneration, entire stands disappeared as the old trees died.

Barmore believed that elk were responsible. “Sometime after 1880 the relative number of elk utilizing park ranges, particularly during the winter, began to increase,” he wrote, listing hunting and development north of the park, as well as “predator destruction,” as possible causes. “Whether the increased use of park winter ranges resulted from an actual drastic increase in the herd or from a bottling up of an abnormally large number of animals on previously marginal winter range is not known,” he added.

Decades of heavy elk browsing left a lasting impact. Studies have found that between 1921 and 1999, new aspen trees grew only on scree slopes and among fallen trees that physically blocked elk access.

A TROPHIC CASCADE

At the dawn of the 21^st century, the situation began to change. The winter elk population in northern Yellowstone fell from a record high of 17,000 in 1995 to less than 2,000 by 2012. Multiple studies conducted in the early 2000s showed that some aspen sprouts were escaping elk browsing and growing tall.

A study published in July 2025 summarized more than two decades of data, finding that the number of young trees taller than six feet increased more than ten-fold between 1998 and 2021. While new aspen trees were virtually absent from northern Yellowstone in 1998, the study found, 43 percent of stands contained them by 2021.

The surge in new growth seemed to parallel the 1995 wolf reintroduction, and media coverage highlighted the connection. “Since wolves’ return, Yellowstone’s aspens are recovering,” read one Washington Post headline in August 2025. “Aspen trees are returning in Yellowstone, thanks to wolves,” read a July 2025 headline from the aptly-named Aspen Public Radio in Aspen, Colorado.

Daniel MacNulty, an ecologist at Utah State University, took issue with these conclusions. In a recent critique, he highlighted a small number of exceptional stands that drove the large increase in trees described in the study, while most aspens showed little change over the same period.

Luke Painter, the Oregon State University ecologist behind the study, agreed that the headlines simplified the data. “There are significant changes, and there are beginnings of recovery, but it’s patchy and it isn’t happening everywhere,” Painter told Mountain Journal. “But a trophic cascade does not have to be everywhere to be significant.” 

In a recent master’s thesis from MacNulty’s Utah State lab, scientists argue that the surge in young trees might be less impactful than previously stated. They used aerial photos to measure the physical area covered by 73 aspen stands on the Northern Range in 1954, 1991 and 2020. The results, which have not been previously reported by any media outlet, show that most aspen stands have continued shrinking since wolf reintroduction.

“Maybe there’s some good regeneration in the heart of the stand. But the rate of contraction actually increased after wolves were introduced.”

Nicholas Bergeron, researcher, utah state university

Between 1954 and 1991, when elk populations in Yellowstone reached record highs, the average size of the 73 stands studied dropped 54 percent. Aspen groves then shrank another 59 percent between 1991 and 2020, despite wolf reintroduction in 1995. Only seven of the 73 stands grew larger during after 1991, and Crystal Creek was one of them.

It remains to be seen whether enough young aspens are surviving to reverse the decades-long decline. “Maybe there’s some good regeneration in the heart of the stand,” said Nicholas Bergeron, author of the thesis. “But the rate of contraction actually increased after wolves were introduced.”

Painter believes aspens appear to be declining because many aspens on the Northern Range are near the end of their lives. “The older trees have been dying off at an accelerated rate since the 1990s,” Painter said in response to the thesis. “Of course it looks like the stands are shrinking. Some of them have lost all their large trees.”

Even where aspens are making a comeback, scientists debate the role that wolves have played.

TYING IT TO WOLVES

The grasslands and sagebrush steppe of Yellowstone’s Northern Range support the park’s largest elk herd. Each winter, when snow piles up in the high county, thousands of elk descend into the valleys of northern Yellowstone and adjacent lands. The herd has shrunk dramatically over the past three decades: from 17,000 in 1995 to 6,673 in 2022, according to some of the most recent data from the Park Service

“Elk have declined a lot since wolves were reintroduced, but it’s not clear that that’s due to wolves,” said Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of another recent study that assessed the impacts of large carnivore recovery across North America. “Other predators have been recovering, there’s been a lot of human hunting of elk, there’s a growing bison population that’s competing substantially with elk, and outside the park ranchers are increasingly tolerant of elk feeding in their irrigated pastures so they have less of a need to migrate into the park in the first place.”

“Most ecologists suspect that wolves and other predators have something to do with the decline of elk,” Wilmers continued. “But how much can be attributed to wolves, how much can be attributed to predators in general, how much is attributed to those other causes hasn’t been worked out yet.”

Cougars, hunted aggressively within the park in the early 1900s, have increased in numbers since the 1980s. As well, the number of grizzly bears in Greater Yellowstone spiked from 136 in 1975 to about 1,030 in 2024 due to federal protections. Between 1998 and 2004, cougars probably killed more Northern Range elk than wolves, and grizzly bears are the main predator of elk calves, potentially contributing to their lower numbers.

“Elk population dynamics are extraordinarily complex and you really can’t pin elk numbers to any one thing,” said wildlife biologist Doug Smith, who led the park’s wolf program from 1995 until his retirement in 2022. He said that the reduced elk population boils down to three factors: carnivores, people and climate.

Human hunting, which killed more elk than wolves between 1995 and 2004, has declined, allowing more elk to survive outside the park in winter, said Smith, adding that warming winters are also luring elk into snow-free valleys north of Yellowstone. “Forty years ago, 80 percent of the elk herd wintered inside the park,” he said. “Now 80 to 90 percent winter outside the park.” 

Decades of research shows that elk generally eat aspens in winter when other foods are scarce.

Smith emphasizes that predators have been a fundamental driver of the change in elk numbers and distribution, and that wolves are one of the park’s most important predators.

The popular video, “How Wolves Change Rivers,” says that fear of wolves “radically” changed elk behavior by making them avoid aspen thickets and steep riverbanks where they might become an easy meal. Some studies from the 2000s supported that conclusion, but more recent research has sowed doubt on this idea.

A 2024 study compared the likelihood that an aspen would be eaten by elk to where wolves kill elk, where wolves spend most of their time, and eight other variables that could show whether an area was unsafe for elk. The results showed little correlation between aspen browsing and the risk of wolf predation. 

“If elk are avoiding wolves at those risky sites, they’re going back at a different time of day and still eating the aspens,” said study lead author Elaine Brice, a researcher at Cornell and a former PhD student in MacNulty’s lab. “It’s not at a big enough timescale to push them off of aspen in a way that will be meaningful for aspen growth.”

Brice’s analysis identified the single best predictor of aspen browsing: the number of elk in a certain place at a certain time. Wolves may indirectly protect aspens by suppressing elk populations, but not by scaring them away from specific patches, she said.

“Elk population dynamics are extraordinarily complex and you really can’t pin elk numbers to any one thing.”

doug smith, former project leader, Yellowstone Gray Wolf Restoration Project, Yellowstone National Park

Brice, who has also published research suggesting that the rate of aspen recovery has been exaggerated, said aspen recovery could take many decades. In addition, wildfire stimulates aspen growth, and many stands might grow back stronger after the next major fire resets the forest.

Aspen recovery might also be limited by record-high bison populations that trample and eat aspen sprouts in some areas, according to Painter.

MacNulty says the future of aspens in northern Yellowstone is far from certain. Research modeling the climate of Yellowstone indicates that most of the Northern Range might be too hot and dry for quaking aspens by the year 2100.

Regardless of what the future holds for the iconic aspen trees, a number of scientists believe the story has stepped over the data. “It’s undeniable that there has been some benefit to wolf reintroduction,” Bergeron said. “But the narrative that wolves are a kind of silver bullet that saved the aspen in Northern Yellowstone is oversimplified.”

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A proposal by the Crow tribal chair could dramatically change who counts as a Crow tribal member under the “blood quantum” standard, a concept created by White settlers and rooted in assimilation tactics.

Blood quantum refers to the fractional amount of tribal affiliation in an individual’s ancestry. It is central to individual identity and highly controversial. 

Right now, according to the tribe’s enrollment policy, an individual must “possess one-quarter Crow Indian blood” to enroll as a member of the Crow Tribe. The proposed legislation from Chairman Frank Whiteclay would alter things so that all existing members would be considered as having 100% Crow “blood.” That would change the lives not just of the 14,289 enrolled Crow tribal members but also potentially thousands of descendants who would be more likely to qualify as tribal members and receive services.

Most tribes nationwide use blood quantum to determine eligibility for citizenship. And being an enrolled citizen of a tribe can make someone eligible for certain health care services and determine whether they can vote in tribal elections, access educational scholarships or inherit certain land. Tribal colleges must serve a certain number of enrolled tribal members to maintain their status. Tribal citizenship also influences a person’s sense of belonging.

The legislation, Whiteclay said, “will affect all of the reservation in a huge way.”

Experts say tribes nationwide will have to contend with blood quantum in the near future. Its limitations, one California Law Review article contends, “threaten to jeopardize the existence of Native nations, as you cannot have a nation without citizens.”

Jill Doerfler, who heads the department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth, said any tribe that uses blood quantum “has an expiration date.”

“That’s what blood quantum is designed to do,” she said. “So, in effect, making everyone four-fourths resets the clock. It doesn’t stop the clock, but it hits reset.”

Tribal Secretary Levi Black Eagle said the notice of the proposed legislation was sent to the tribe’s 18-member Legislature and will be added to the body’s January meeting agenda. A committee will discuss the legislation and propose amendments. And if the act passes the Legislature by a simple majority, it will return to the chair, who can sign it into law.  

Black Eagle acknowledged that the act isn’t a perfect solution to the generations-long blood quantum conundrum. 

“The United States government requires us to have some sort of metric in place to say, ‘OK, these people qualify as a legal member of the tribe,’” he said. “So we’re taking the leeway we have within that system and flexing our sovereignty.”

CROW AND BLOOD QUANTUM

Whiteclay, whose term as chairman ends in 2028 and who cannot run again because of term limits, said he proposed the legislation to “break a cycle of lost enrollment” and to improve the lives of members and descendants. 

He referred to the issue of blood quantum as “death by numbers.” With each new generation, and as tribal members marry non-Natives or people from other tribes, it becomes harder for the Crow Tribe, and for any tribe using blood quantum, to maintain its membership. Whiteclay said when he took office as chairman in 2020, the tribe had about 14,600 members. Five years later, that number has declined by at least 311 people. 

The proposed legislation, Whiteclay said, will also address several other issues for community members. 

“There’s a lot of kids and people on the reservation; everything about them is Crow,” Whiteclay said. “They live here, they’re part of the culture. Everything about them [is Crow] except their blood quantum by a very small percent, a small fraction.” 

For Black Eagle, a supporter of the legislation, the issue is personal. He said that because his mother-in-law is a member of another tribe, his wife grew up being told she’d have to marry someone from a certain tribe if she wanted her children to be enrolled members. 

“It’s sad,” Black Eagle said. “It just really narrows the limits on how you want to live your life. And I don’t think us tribal members should have that in the back of our mind. I think that we should just be free to live our lives and love whoever we want and make a family with whoever we want.”

Blood quantum, Black Eagle said, is not used to define other groups of people.

“People say, ‘What pedigree does your horse have?’” he said. “Or, ‘How much does your dog cost? Does it have papers?’ That’s the kind of vein we’re in. But we’re not animals.”

While early reactions to Whiteclay’s Facebook post indicated widespread support, expanding blood quantum requirements is controversial. A popular counterargument is that broader enrollment requirements could result in more people vying for fewer resources in a federal system where resources are already scarce. 

“I think that we should just be free to live our lives and love whoever we want and make a family with whoever we want.”

Levi Black Eagle, Secretary of the Crow Tribe

But for Whiteclay, the issue “is bigger than ourselves.”

“We have to have that mentality that the tribe as a whole should benefit,” he said. “Not just a certain few.” 

Blood quantum controversy, Doerfler said, often reveals different attitudes towards citizenship. 

“Some people might think about every citizen as draining the nation, as taking something,” she said. “Other people might see more citizens as having more power, more leverage, more votes, more lobbying. Maybe they see more citizens as contributing something.”

HISTORY OF BLOOD QUANTUM

One of the first deployments of the concept of blood quantum was in Virginia in the 18th century. At the time, it restricted the rights of anyone deemed more than 50% Native American. 

From 1887 to 1934, the federal government divided reservation land into allotments for distribution to individual tribal members with the goal that private ownership would assimilate Native Americans into White society. The government used the concept of blood quantum to determine who was eligible for allotments. And in 1934, with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, tribes began using blood quantum as a requirement for their own citizenship. 

Blood quantum was determined in different ways for different tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example, used census rolls to assign blood quantum to some Native Americans, though their calculations were often incorrect. Doerfler said blood quantum for the White Earth Nation in Minnesota was established by anthropologists.

“They came and measured people’s heads and did a scratch test on the chest to see the reaction of the skin, took hair samples, did analysis of the hair samples and cobbled together blood quantum out of that,” she said.

That process, which serves as the basis for blood quantum for tribal members today, Doerfler said, is inherently flawed. She said she has seen blood quantum rolls of biological siblings with vastly different quantum amounts. 

“What we can see in those inconsistencies is that there is no way to measure blood quantum,” she said. “What test are you going to do to measure blood?”

Historically, tribes did not determine membership based on biological ancestry. Doerfler said some tribes adopted people into the community, or based membership on factors such as where a person lived or their relationships within a community. Identity, she said, cannot be measured in the way blood quantum suggests. 

“Sometimes, I try to get people to think about American citizenship,” she said. “How much American blood do you have? How much Montana blood do you have? Or how much Minnesotan blood do you have? It’s not a thing. You can say, ‘I was born and raised here. My parents were born and raised here.’ But there isn’t a ‘blood’ associated with that.”

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Last year, nearly 98,500 people in Montana boarded or departed the Empire Builder, the train that rumbles across the Hi-Line as it connects Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. Passenger numbers have climbed from a COVID-era low of about 65,700, but remain well below the most recent high of 156,700 in 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation. 

Is that a sign that demand for passenger trains in Montana is dropping or that the trains are in the wrong places, far from major population centers? That depends on who you ask. But despite the current state of passenger train travel in Montana, there is a growing group that wants to see another route emerge. 

In November, a coalition of counties focused on building a southern route added its 20th member. Together they make up the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority, a rare form of government agency hoping to develop a new passenger line with twice-daily service through Billings, Bozeman and Missoula, three of the state’s largest cities that lie along Interstate 90. 

Montanans eyeing expensive plane tickets or worrying about the TSA’s new surcharge for air travelers without a REAL ID might be intrigued by the prospect of a route between the state’s major metropolitan areas.

Montana Free Press sifted through documents, attended transportation meetings and spoke to official (and self-appointed) Montana train experts to try to answer these questions. 

WHO IS PUSHING FOR THE SOUTHERN LINE AND WHAT’S THE VISION? 

The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority was incorporated in 2020 via a century-old Montana law. The agency is hoping for operational passenger service by the early to mid-2030s. 

“We put a person on the moon in the 1960s in less than 10 years. For God’s sake, we should be able to get a train running on existing infrastructure in less than that,” Dave Strohmaier, BSPRA’s president, said in a recent interview with Montana Free Press. 

BSPRA plans to run along an old route that Amtrak discontinued in 1979, called the North Coast Hiawatha. BSPRA is not currently planning to lay new sections of track in Montana, but instead intends to modify existing freight corridors to allow passenger trains to coexist. 

”What we would be picking up — by way of this expanded service in southern Montana — is connectivity to all of the major population centers in both the states of Montana and North Dakota, and layer in an additional handful of iconic national parks, like Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota,” Strohmaier said.

BSPRA doesn’t have many details about scheduling, stops, ticket prices or the specific types of trains that would carry passengers. But Strohmier hopes to offer twice-daily service at each stop and feels confident the route would run through three of Montana’s largest cities. (Strohmaier also serves as a Missoula County commissioner.)

WHO SUPPORTS AND OPPOSES THIS?

BSPRA’s ally in the state Legislature, Rep. Denise Baum, D-Billings, tried and failed to secure millions in funding for the early stages of route planning during the 2025 legislative session. U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, who delivered a virtual keynote at BSPRA’s annual conference in September, is sponsoring a bill in Congress that would eliminate the need for matching investments from local and state governments for large-scale railroad projects. (Though most of the funding would come from the federal government, the early planning phases require a local investment BSPRA is currently struggling to acquire.) The bill has not progressed since Sheehy introduced it in late September.

The most vocal opponents to a new passenger rail route, including 40-year veteran of the freight rail industry and passenger-rail enthusiast Mark Meyer, peppered BSPRA’s Facebook page with enough dissent to prompt the agency to turn off comments. 

“You have to tell people what the obstacles are, what’s going on. And Amtrak is in such sorry shape now, we really need to fix what we have, otherwise we’re going to lose it all,” Meyer told MTFP in a recent interview.

Meyer developed his most personal connection to railroads during the 13 years he traveled on Amtrak’s Empire Builder line between Seattle and Cutbank, his hometown, to visit his mother while she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. 

“It was a lifeline,” Meyer said.

Meyer now publishes opinion pieces in publications across the West about the rail industry from his home in Portland, Oregon.

He decries money that might be spent on scoping, securing and setting up the new route for a number of reasons, including the lack of details about that route and operating schedule, that he considers “imperative to determine the utility of a service.”

WHAT WOULD THE SOUTHERN ROUTE COST?

About $4 billion, according to the Glendive Ranger-Review’s reporting on a 2024 estimate from the Federal Railroad Administration. Here’s the breakdown:

• $1.1 billion for five train sets, including locomotives and passenger cars.
• $1.3 to $1.7 billion to build and maintain facilities, including stations, along the route.
• $930 million for track development and improvement. Though track already exists to carry freight through the proposed southern route, BSPRA anticipates the need for upgrades, like new signals and areas of double-track.
• $136 million for operation and maintenance.

That estimate doesn’t factor in current unknowns, like the exact necessary improvements on existing tracks that engineers would assess before breaking ground. 

BUT DOESN’T MONTANA ALREADY HAVE A PASSENGER RAIL ROUTE? HOW IS THAT WORKING OUT?

Astute! Amtrak’s Empire Builder, inaugurated in 1929, connects Chicago to the Pacific Northwest via a route that stops at 12 northern Montana towns between Libby and Wolf Point. This is the route Meyer used to visit his mother in Cutbank. 

A trip between Chicago and Portland takes about 46 hours — about 11 of which are through Montana — via Superliner cars pulled by ALC-42 locomotives. For a full trip from end to end, a coach seat costs a few hundred dollars and a private room is between $650 and $1,000. 

The service is not doing particularly well. About two-thirds of the number of people ride the Empire Builder today compared to ridership in 2008. Though traveler numbers are up since a COVID-driven decline, they remain lower than before the pandemic. Railway Age, a train-focused trade publication, published a story in late September that revealed a host of problems facing Amtrak’s long-distance trains like the Empire Builder, including a combination of limited funding and archaic equipment that cause frequent delays. Meyer worries that a new line would face the same ridership challenges and equipment failures that plague the Empire Builder. 

“My biggest problem with the Big Sky Passenger Rail people is they’re a distraction because they’re going full-speed ahead, telling everybody, ‘Yeah, this is gonna happen in the 2030s.’ And they rarely mention the clear and present danger that affects the long-distance trains,” Meyer said.

Meyer thinks federal funds would be better spent on reinvigorating the ailing rail manufacturing industry. 

“If the stations, the track structure, the equipment and the mechanical facilities could drop out of the sky tomorrow and be in place, I’d be right on board with them. But being reality-based, I know that that’s not the case,” Meyer said. “And knowing that, you have to understand that I believe that the Empire Builder and all the other long-distance trains are going to be discontinued if we continue on the same path — we are not addressing this equipment problem.”

He believes Amtrak should reinforce its existing routes in dense areas and expand in populated areas, like the Midwest, instead of growing its already lagging long-distance rail in places like the Mountain West. 

“Let’s make sure that what we have right now is saveable before you have some pie-in-the-sky fantasy about additional trains,” Meyer said. 

But Strohmaier says the proposed southern Montana route wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Empire Builder due to the difference in geography between the two services.

“You look in North Dakota and Montana, the Empire Builder doesn’t pass through any major communities,” Strohmaier said. 

Strohmaier also believes the new route, much like the Empire Builder, could provide access to long-distance travel for rural Montana communities not in proximity to highways or airports. A 2025 study published by the Federal Railroad Administration about potentially adding passenger routes nationwide said the new routes, including the proposed line through southern Montana and North Dakota, could increase rural access to long-distance transportation from 30% to about 48%. 

SO WHO WILL GET WHAT THEY WANT? DAVE OR MARK?

Truth be told, no one really knows. Long-distance rail investment at this scale is unprecedented in the 21st century. And challenges, like rallying the rail manufacturing industry, remain for BSPRA even if it overcomes funding obstacles. 

Undeterred, BSPRA is on a slow and uncertain track toward a southern passenger route through Montana. The agency is currently finalizing the first part of the Federal Railroad Authority’s three-step process called the corridor identification program.

“The corridor identification program is the mechanism by which the Federal Railroad Administration moves projects from concept into design into being a shovel-ready project that can break ground,” Strohmaier said. 

Amtrak received a $500,000 grant from the Federal Railroad Administration to complete the first step of the process in 2023. Using those funds, they estimated the second step, drafting a service development plan, would cost about $11 million. The federal government could cover most of that, but it requires either a $1.1 million local investment, like the one Baum failed to pass in the state Legislature, or the success of Sheehy’s bill in Congress, which would shift that project planning gap to federal funding.

The third step of the corridor identification program, which includes preliminary engineering and environmental reviews, costs an amount to be determined and would require a 20% local match. 

Despite the reality that it would be a decade until the new operating route through southern Montana would hypothetically begin service, Strohmaier continues to lobby at the local, state and federal levels to secure early rounds of funding for planning the line. 

 “I would not have spent the last five years of my life doing this unless I thought it was something that we could actually achieve,” Strohmaier said.  

The post The debate over the future of passenger trains in Montana appeared first on Montana Free Press.

As a self-employed rancher operating a family business in Busby, about an hour and a half east of Billings, Kirby Walborn has purchased his health insurance through the federal Affordable Care Act marketplace for years. 

For the most part, Walborn, 63, said the Obama-era health insurance marketplace has held up to its “affordable” moniker. He estimated that the plan covering him and his wife currently costs about $650 a month in premiums — a slight increase from what Walborn said he paid in 2024. 

But when he logged onto the federal marketplace this month to re-up his family’s plan for 2026, Walborn saw much more than a small price increase: the premiums were set to spike to roughly $2,400 a month — a nearly 270% increase.

About 77,000 Montanans purchased health insurance coverage through the marketplace last year — a key resource for people who don’t have health insurance from an employer and are either too young to qualify for Medicare or make too much to qualify for Medicaid. 

Most of those enrollees, about 67,000, currently qualify for a subsidy to help keep their premiums affordable — the average monthly discount this year is $545. But for many residents, such as the Walborns, enhanced financial support made available during the pandemic is set to expire at the end of 2025, with no alternative affordability plan in place. 

Some of the people health experts say will be hit the hardest by the loss of subsidies include older adults who make more than 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $85,000 for a family of two.

Walborn said he won’t qualify for any subsidy in 2026. For him and other Montanans who spoke to MTFP, the sudden end to the enhanced subsidies has made it financially painful or downright impossible to afford health insurance next year. Some, like Walborn, are scrambling to come up with hundreds or thousands of dollars more a month to pay for insurance. 

“It’s kind of a shocker, but I’m in a bind. I can’t go without,” Walborn said.

Walborn has an iron disorder that requires him to get his blood drawn every few months. He worries about a future cancer diagnosis after a recent MRI identified a lump he needs to have biopsied. And, in his line of work, Walborn has also faced the occasional emergency. This spring, he got into a bit of a tumble with an ATV, he recalled, resulting in a broken pelvis. 

“I’ve got to have the insurance,” Walborn said, noting that it will be more than a year until he becomes eligible for Medicare

Other Montanans, expressing a mix of fear and resignation, told MTFP they are planning to go without any coverage at all.

“I’m not going to get insurance unless the subsidies change. If those don’t continue, there’s no way I could afford it,” said Jacklynn Thiel, 61, a retired state employee who lives in Boulder. 

Thiel said that, with the enhanced subsidies, she currently pays no monthly premium. Next year, her costs for a catastrophic, high-deductible plan is set to increase to $785 a month. Thiel said that difference has made her decide to go without insurance next year. 

“If I have no insurance and then go into the hospital, they’ll still treat me and I’ll claim medical bankruptcy,” she reasoned. “… I think medical bankruptcy is the better option.”

The question about whether to extend the enhanced subsidy policy was at the root of the federal government shutdown that stretched from Oct. 1 to mid-November. Congressional Democrats pushed for an expansion to current subsidies, while Republicans said that debate should happen separately from the vote to fund the government. 

The four members of Montana’s delegation, all Republicans, have expressed fierce opposition to continuing the expanded subsidies, calling them a giveaway to insurance companies that adds fuel to the fire of exponentially increasing health care costs. Some have also long opposed the Affordable Care Act, blaming it for driving up the cost of premiums.

“Nothing has contributed more to increased cost of health care than the Affordable Care Act,” said eastern Montana Rep. Troy Downing, a freshman congressmember and Montana’s former insurance regulator, in a November interview with NBC Montana. 

When asked in that interview about Montanans impacted by the end of the enhanced subsidy, Downing said that the pandemic-era expanded financial aid has made up a “really small amount” of the total subsidies Montanans receive through the ACA.

“Most of those folks are going to be just fine with or without that,” Downing told the interviewer. 

Walborn, who said he spent most of his life aligned with the Republican party, has more recently found himself rooting for the Democrats, in part because of the issue of health care affordability. He said he was following news of the federal shutdown closely and watched as a faction of Democrats “caved” by voting to reopen the government, punting the debate about insurance subsidies to a later date. 

In the last few weeks, Walborn took time to write to Downing, who represents his congressional district. In his email, he urged the congressmember to extend the enhanced subsidies to “help make health insurance affordable for working Americans like me.”

“Losing that support would mean choosing between healthcare and other basic needs — a choice no American should have to make,” Walborn wrote.

In a mid-November email responding to Walborn, Downing’s office thanked him for his input on the ACA, but noted that the enhanced subsidies were originally passed as a temporary measure during the pandemic.

“Clearly, the pandemic is well behind us,” the email read. 

Other Montanans said they felt politically mobilized by the looming cost increases for health insurance. Timothy Stevens, 58, a longtime conservation advocate who lives in Livingston, said he was closely monitoring the federal shutdown because of its impact on national parks and federal employees. 

But at some point in reading national headlines over the fight between Democrats and Republicans, Stevens recalled, it clicked for him that the health insurance issue was the most central to his own life.

“Then I realized, wait a minute, I’m the person that they’re talking about that they shut the government over,” Stevens said in a November interview. “I am the person who has been receiving this enhanced subsidy.”

Currently, Stevens said he and his wife pay about $1,200 in premiums for a monthly plan, an amount he described as painful “but doable.” With the end of the enhanced subsidy, the same plan would cost his household more than $2,800 a month, he said. The couple has decided to divert money from their retirement contributions to cover the new expense.

Like Walborn, Stevens said he was keeping a close eye on Montana’s congressional representatives for possible solutions. 

“Where is the Montana delegation?” Stevens posed. “This is like a fundamental thing. If we can’t take care of our health care, I mean, like what is this country coming to? And what do these guys care about? Because it sure ain’t me.”

In a November hearing about health insurance policy, Republican members on the Senate Finance Committee proposed other policy fixes for the increasing affordability crisis, including expanding use of pre-tax Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for users to draw on for routine health care needs. Other Republicans criticized Democrats for taking a “business as usual” approach to the Affordable Care Act by continuing to give subsidies directly to insurance companies. 

During the hearing, Montana Sen. Steve Daines reiterated his frustrations with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, but said little about alternative policies to keep insurance prices down for consumers. 

“I believe any path forward on this issue requires reforms to address the root causes of why? Why does Obamacare perpetuate high costs and instability, as well as the substantial growth in improper enrollment, fraud, and wasteful spending,” Daines said. “In addition to permanent structural reforms to Obamacare, any path forward should expand access to and unleash free market, patient-centered solutions President Trump championed during his first term to provide lower costs, more control, and better care for individuals. I think both sides should agree we need that, and we need it badly.”

A spokesperson for Daines’ office did not respond to a question about specific alternatives the senator supports in place of ACA subsidies. 

Other free market health care reform advocates say there’s promise in the talk of expanding access to HSAs, rather than passing subsidies to insurance companies. Kendall Cotton, president and CEO of the Montana policy group the Frontier Institute, said an early November social media post by Trump calling for health policies to “pay the people, not the insurance companies,” could eventually help Montanans access health care outside of a restrictive insurance plan.

“I think the whole point is you’re putting people in charge of their own health care decisions. They don’t have to be bound by insurance networks,” Cotton said. “… It’s allowing people just to shop for the best health care that they can find at the best value.”

Members of Congress and the Trump administration have so far failed to come forward with a proposal to prevent marketplace enrollees from seeing sharp cost increases in the new year, despite the president considering an extension to subsidies. The deadline for signing up for a plan through the ACA marketplace with a Jan. 1 start date is Dec. 15. 

In Montana, some residents have bitterly accepted the looming price increase, preparing to shuffle money around to make ends meet or going without insurance entirely.

Shelley Eisenrich, a resident of Hot Springs about an hour south of Kalispell, said her wife has decided to forego insurance until she turns 65 next year and becomes eligible for Medicare, the federal program for which Eisenrich already qualifies. 

Her wife’s current plan through the ACA costs about $540 in monthly premiums, Eisenrich said. Next year’s premiums for the same plan are estimated to be closer to $1,200 — a cost the couple says they’re not willing to pay.

Without any chronic conditions, Eisenrich said it makes more sense for her wife to temporarily go without insurance.

“We both agree that she should just wrap herself in bubble wrap for the next seven months,” Eisenrich said.

The post Facing a subsidy sunset, Montanans brace for health insurance increases appeared first on Montana Free Press.

With nearly 24,000 farms and ranches operating in Montana, the state’s residents are pitching in to produce a wide variety of food — from beef to chickpeas — for consumers around the world.

But how often are Montanans regularly consuming locally grown products? Some local food advocates say not nearly enough.

“We’re so lucky in Montana to have a true abundance and plethora of foods we can eat year-round,” said Erin Austin, the director of community partners and sales at Abundant Montana. The nonprofit works to promote about 1,100 food producers and businesses in the state in an effort to increase local food consumption. 

In the 1950s, Austin said, about 70% of the food Montanans ate came from within the state. As of 2021, she said, that number had dwindled to 3%. The organization is trying to drive that percentage back up, in part by mapping out where Montanans can find nearby growers and ranchers. 

Austin said it’s absolutely possible to make an entire Thanksgiving meal with locally sourced ingredients, even if that means diverging from some traditional recipes. Local food may be more flavorful and nutritious because it was picked at peak ripeness, she said. Those purchases also help fuel the local economy, she added, powering up Montana’s rural and home-grown communities. 

With Thanksgiving around the corner, here are five Montana-made foods that you can add to your festivities.

PUTTING TURKEY ON THE TABLE

Montana is well-known for being cattle country, with cows still outnumbering people statewide. The state, however, doesn’t even rank in the top 13 for turkey production, according to the most recent data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

To be fair, there’s no real reason why your Thanksgiving spread couldn’t include Montana beef (or chicken, for that matter), but if you’re on the lookout for a more traditional turkey dinner, Montana growers can help fill the gap.

Flocking Good Farms near the north-central town of Big Sandy is operated by Carissa Bergren and Joe Ostrom as part of the larger Ostrom Acres farm operation. The farm touts its in-house feed that’s free from corn, soy products and GMOs and helps nurture the gaggle of chickens and turkeys. 

After being recently featured by KRTV, a Great Falls television station, Ostrom said the farm’s sales have skyrocketed, leaving only three turkeys remaining as of last week. Ostrom also credited the jump in sales for the two-year-old business to a growing awareness about locally grown food.

“I think people are getting aware of where their food comes from, and they know it’s a better quality food,” Ostrom said. “I’ll just say that it’s gone better than I ever expected.” 

Of course, wild turkey hunting is also legal in Montana, as long as recreators have the proper fees and permits in place. The state has two subspecies — Merriam’s and Eastern — of turkey, though neither is native to the state. The most popular season for hunting wild gobblers is in the spring, but fall hunting is currently underway until Jan. 1. According to Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department, popular regions for turkey hunting include the Custer National Forest and parts of Fergus County and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

STEP ASIDE IDAHO — MONTANA HAS POTATOES, TOO

In a state that often flexes its exceptionalism (really big sky, full of treasure, etc.), we will admit that our neighbors to the west have some very nice potatoes. But that doesn’t mean Montanans have to shop outside of the state’s borders for this Thanksgiving staple. 

In 2023, Montana had almost 12,000 acres planted for seed potatoes, roughly a third of Idaho’s total acreage for the crop. The starch is so popular that the town of Manhattan, about 25 minutes west of Bozeman, hosts an annual Potato Festival every August.

One local resource for finding made-in-Montana spuds is Root Cellar Foods. The food distributor allows for online ordering and local pickup locations and drop-off options around the Gallatin Valley. If you can’t order in advance, several of the growers that work with Root Cellar Foods also advertise their own farm stands that are open regularly with an assortment of products.

PUMPKIN PIES AND SQUASH OF ALL STRIPES

Although Montana also doesn’t crack the list of top-10 states for pumpkin production across the country, the Thanksgiving-essential squash is bountiful at farm operations around the state. (Some growers are certainly trying to stand out in their field, so to speak, with a 1,591-pound pumpkin breaking Montana’s state record this year for largest pumpkin ever recorded.)

That said, baking isn’t everyone’s area of expertise, even with high-quality local ingredients. If you’re near the town of Belt, just southeast of Great Falls, the team at Ever Westward Farm is taking orders for homemade Buttermilk Cardamom Pumpkin Pie available for pickup at its farm stand. 

Other types of Montana-grown squash can grace your Thanksgiving tables in the form of more savory dishes, too. Butternut, acorn and delicata are just some of the varieties of squash available from Winter Kissed Farm in Stevensville, a farm operation that focuses on CSA distribution within the Bitterroot Valley and beyond.

LENTILS, CHICKPEAS AND GRAINS GALORE

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one area of the agricultural sector where Montana shines is in its diversity of nutritious grains grown across much of the central and eastern part of the state. 

Two crops that could provide the foundation for a Thanksgiving salad or side dish are Montana lentils and chickpeas, some of the state’s most common pulse crops. A lentil salad for the holiday can also include many other grown-in-Montana ingredients, including squash, greens and root vegetables. Cooked chickpeas can be ground down into hummus for an appetizer or featured in a heartier vegetarian side dish. 

Prairie Roots, the marketing enterprise of Sather Ranch, LLC in northeast Montana, about an hour north of Glasgow, carries both chickpeas and lentils, along with an assortment of other grain products. They offer delivery to nearby towns along the Hi-Line, including Malta, Hinsdale, Glasgow, Nashua and Wolf Point. 

BERRIES BESIDES CRANBERRIES

Cranberries, the accent fruit traditionally used to contrast savory poultry or stuffing, aren’t very easy to produce in Montana because of its dry climate. But other berries are bountiful and ready to use in jams, syrups, sauces or baked inside pies for Thanksgiving. 

Catherine McNeil, the former president of the Montana Berry Growers Association and the operator of Apple Bar Orchard near Helena, is particularly fond of haskaps. The oblong, dusty blue berries are also known as honeyberries. But McNeil said many Montanans don’t know about them, or how versatile they can be in cooking and baking. 

“Some people have used [haskaps] with pork,” she said. “I’ve used them with meatballs. … I’ve never tried them with poultry; that’s not saying I wouldn’t. For sure, I think they would go great.”

McNeil also pointed to Township Road Farm in Worden, just northeast of Billings, as another berry grower offering a range of products, including elderberries, currants and chokecherries, that could enhance Thanksgiving meals. 

The post Montana-grown ingredients for your Thanksgiving spread appeared first on Montana Free Press.

A group of nonprofits is petitioning Montana’s utility board to tighten its oversight of NorthWestern Energy, arguing existing customers could foot the bill for the utility’s plan to provide data centers with electricity.

Nine groups working on energy, conservation, social justice and affordability issues on Tuesday asked the Public Service Commission to impose rules on NorthWestern so its 413,000-plus residential customers won’t be forced to shoulder the cost of new power plants and transmission lines to power data centers.

Here’s what we know about the data centers in question, how Montana law intersects with the debate and what the petitioners are asking the PSC to do in response.

HOW MUCH POWER DO THESE DATA CENTERS WANT NORTHWESTERN ENERGY TO SUPPLY?

NorthWestern Energy has signed letters of intent to supply power to three data centers, according to the complaint. If all goes according to the forecasted demand, by 2030, NorthWestern will supply 1,400 megawatts of power to these data centers to meet their needs. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual electricity needs of more than 1 million homes and more than double the 759 megawatts of power NorthWestern’s existing customers require on a typical day.

NorthWestern has signed agreements with Atlas Power, which seeks 75 megawatt of power for a facility in Butte starting in 2026 and and another 75 megawatts by 2030; Sabey Data Center Properties, which would initially require 50 megawatts to power a 600-acre campus planned for Butte and eventually expand its use to 250 megawatts; and Quantica Infrastructure, which wants to secure 175 megawatts for a project in Yellowstone County by late 2027 and increase its electrical footprint to 1,000 megawatts by 2030.

At least two of the aforementioned data centers are still very much in the planning stage. Yellowstone County’s planning department told MTFP last week that Quantica has not submitted a proposal for the project to the county. A land deal associated with the Sabey facility has not yet been finalized. Another project that’s drawn public interest, a 600-megawatt proposal that TAC Data Centers considered building in the Great Falls area, appears to have faltered.

According to the complaint, NorthWestern currently owns or has standing contracts for about 2,100 megawatts of power. It will acquire 592 additional megawatts of power from the Colstrip coal-fired power plant on Jan. 1, although it already has plans for some of that additional electricity.

WHY ARE THE PETITIONERS WORRIED ABOUT THESE DATA CENTERS?

The petitioners argue that NorthWestern’s plan to sign electricity service agreements before garnering regulatory approval is “unreasonable, insufficient and contrary to Montana law.”

More specifically, they argue that NorthWestern has “short circuited” the public’s right to know what the company is doing. The petitioners also say NorthWestern is inappropriately blocking oversight by, for example, moving to shield the letters of intent from public review. The PSC has the authority to ensure NorthWestern won’t shift new costs to its ratepayers, who are unable to shop around for power from other utilities, the petitioners contend.

The petitioners are Big Sky 55+, Butte Watchdogs for Social and Environmental Justice, Climate Smart Missoula, Golden Triangle Resource Council, Helena Interfaith Climate Advocates, Honor the Earth, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Public Interest Research Group and NW Energy Coalition.

Shannon James, Montana Environmental Information Center’s climate and campaigns organizer, said in a press release Tuesday that Montana should learn from other states’ missteps and avoid a hands-off approach to data center regulation.

“Communities across the country have suffered when large, noisy data centers move into their neighborhoods, raising their power bills and taking their water,” James said. “Montana has a chance to get ahead of the curve and protect existing utility customers from having to pay for expensive new fossil fuel power plants so NorthWestern Energy can cater to wealthy tech companies.”

WHAT DO THE PETITIONERS WANT THE PSC TO DO?

The petition asks the PSC to create a separate customer class for data centers, complete with a separate tariff, or rate structure, for the power they buy. In addition to establishing a unique formula for data centers’ power bills, a specialized tariff could stipulate that data centers give NorthWestern plenty of notice before changing their power usage. That could “provide more predictability” to the utility and shield its other customers from undue risk, the complaint reads.

If the PSC grants the request, the petitioners will have an opportunity to ask NorthWestern about its plans in a quasi-judicial public hearing. The groups will also have the opportunity to call experts to testify about potential impacts to NorthWestern’s customers if data centers tie into NorthWestern’s grid.

WHAT KINDS OF STATE LAWS ARE IN PLAY?

The petition references a Montana law outlining the process for large new customers to secure electrical service from a regulated utility. That law says that a new retail customer can’t purchase more than 5 megawatts of power from a public utility unless it first demonstrates to the PSC “that the provision of electricity supply service … will not adversely impact the public utility’s other customers over the long term.”

The petition also highlights sections of Montana law that establish the authority and duties of the PSC, which is made up of five elected officials. In keeping with a two-decade trend, the PSC is an all-Republican board.

The laws in question give the PSC the authority to “inquire into the management of the business of all public utilities,” and obtain “all necessary information to enable the commission to perform its duties.” It also authorizes the PSC to “inspect the books, accounts, papers, records and memoranda of any public utility and examine, under oath, any officer, agent, or employee of the public utility in relation to its business and affairs.”

WHAT DOES NORTHWESTERN SAY ABOUT THE DATA CENTER AGREEMENTS?

Jo Dee Black, a spokesperson for NorthWestern Energy, wrote in an email to MTFP on Tuesday that the company has committed to establishing a tariff specifically for large-load customers. She added that contracts for new data center customers will be submitted to the PSC “as they are executed.”

“New commercial customers with large energy loads, including data centers, will pay their fair share of integration and service costs,” Black wrote. “Infrastructure investments will ultimately mean a larger, more resilient energy system in Montana, however, new large load customers, such as data centers, will have to pay for their costs to integrate with the energy system.” 

Black didn’t directly answer MTFP’s question regarding the number of agreements NorthWestern has signed with data centers, offering only that the company “has the three Letters of Intent” referenced in the petitioners’ complaint.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

If the PSC grants the’ request, parties to the proceeding — the petitioners, NorthWestern Energy and other organizations or individuals that the PSC clears for participation — will start building a case for commissioners to review. The PSC could issue an order based on the case, with or without first scheduling a hearing.

The post Groups push back on Montana’s ‘data center boom’ in petition before utility commission appeared first on Montana Free Press.

In late October, roughly 77,000 Montanans found out that their main source of food aid for the next month wasn’t coming. At the start of November, more than $13 million in federal nutrition assistance allocations was slated to replenish accounts of Montanans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The federal government shutdown brought the flow of benefits to an abrupt halt.

While such federal budget hiatuses have occurred before, the decision by President Donald Trump’s administration not to tap into emergency reserves to distribute SNAP benefits to more than 41 million Americans defied precedent. Federal authorities have leveraged other ways to fund the program during past shutdowns. This time was different.

In Montana, where state government officials opted not to backfill benefits like some other states did, families went without their typical food aid for roughly two weeks. Partial benefits trickled onto Montanans’ EBT cards on Nov. 9, at the order of federal judges. After the shutdown ended on Nov. 12, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services promised to backfill the rest of the month’s benefits. But ultimately the delay in funds has had a cascading effect on low-income Montanans’ budgets, anti-hunger advocates told Montana Free Press, revealing just how close to the margins many are living.  

“It’s great that benefits are being backfilled. However, our communities still experienced significant harm and hunger,” said Kiera Condon, advocacy specialist with the Montana Food Bank Network, the umbrella organization for more than 300 food pantries and distribution sites across the state, noting that SNAP benefits can’t be used to pay for rent or other essentials. “We just really hope that something like this never happens again.”

MTFP asked Montanans to share how they were navigating the temporary lapse in food aid. We heard back from nearly 20 people during the first two weeks of November, before they knew when benefits would restart.

Here’s some of what they told us.

The post ‘It just snowballs’: Montanans describe how the freeze on federal food aid impacted them appeared first on Montana Free Press.

As Montanans pause this Veterans Day to honor those who served, it’s worth noting just how many of our neighbors have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. Montana ranks among the top states in the nation for veterans per capita.

According to 2023 data from the Veterans Administration, Montana ranks third per capita, behind only Alaska and Virginia, for the number of veterans who call the state home. According to those stats, roughly 1 in 13 Montanans has served in the military. That’s 88,543 residents overall.

Located across the Bering Strait from Russia, Alaska’s ranking stems from its strategic location and several major military installations. Virginia’s is explainable by its dense network of bases, government and defense employers adjacent to Washington, D.C.

Montana, with its single active Air Force base, Malmstrom in Great Falls, has a less-visible presence in terms of active-duty military personnel, with 3,432 active service men and women stationed in Montana as of June 2025 as opposed to 20,671 in Alaska and 122,254 in Virginia. Recruiting figures also show Montana is middle-of-the-pack in terms of the fraction of residents who sign up for active-duty service.

One theory is that Montana is an attractive destination for veterans as they retire from active military service.

Dr. Elizabeth Barrs, a retired Army officer and the director of the University of Montana’s Defense Critical Language & Culture Program, said in an interview that, while she isn’t aware of any hard data on the subject, anecdotally she hears that the state’s recreational options are a draw.

“I think a lot of service members are drawn to outdoor activities,” she said. “The military is an adrenaline-filled career and I think people are looking to fill that.” 

Barrs also cited housing that has historically been less expensive than other states, veterans’ resources like Fort Harrison and a number of new VA clinics across the state as well as an active Special Forces Association chapter. 

As she commemorates Veterans Day this year, Barrs said she’s thinking about the military as an example of engaged citizenship.

 “I hope that Americans focus on what joins us together. In our military, millions of young people from every walk of life come together to serve one common ideal — the Constitution,” she said. “I wish Americans would look to that as an example.”

The post One theory on why Montana has a disproportionate number of veterans  appeared first on Montana Free Press.

In Billings, the state’s largest city in the state’s largest county, about 200 votes decided the 30,000-vote race for mayor this week. In Helena, city Commissioner Emily Dean defeated fellow Commissioner Andy Shirtliff for mayor by 203 votes, roughly 2% of the nearly 11,000 ballots cast. In Laurel, a small town west of Billings, 25 votes separated two mayoral candidates in a 1,100-vote election. In central Montana’s Petroleum County, the smallest in the state by population, a candidate lost the county commission race by 17 votes. And in the northwest Montana town of Rexford, a town council race was decided by a two-vote margin. 

Close races could leave a person wondering: How many votes do you need to win a Montana election? Just one, actually.

But state statute allows the loser to request recounts with any margin less than or equal to 0.5% of votes cast in the race. So in a race with more than 200 voters that was decided by one vote, election officials would likely be tasked with conducting a recount.

If a race is decided by 0.25%, the elections office foots the bill for the recount. If the margin is between 0.25% and 0.5%, the defeated candidate would have to pay.

No major Montana races are currently eligible for a recount, though vote counts are considered unofficial until canvassing is completed later this month. But a recount did happen this time last year.

After Park County Republican Marty Malone trailed then-candidate Scott Rosenzweig by 20 votes in a race for the state Legislature, Malone requested a recount. It didn’t save him. The final tally: Rosenzweig 3,802, Malone 3,785.

So how does it feel to lose by less than 1%? Montana Free Press asked marketing professional Kassi Strong, who was running for city council in Billings’ Ward 2 on Tuesday. Strong lost to former county commissioner Denis Pitman by 109 votes.

“Part of me feels like, ‘Man, was there something I could have done just a little better to pick up that small amount of votes?’”

Recent Montana races have been even tighter.

In 2021, two incidents of voter fraud stumped election officials in Phillips County when a mayoral race was decided by two votes. Incumbent Angel Arocha, who had the lead going into the confusion, won. 

In 2023, Missoula’s City Council Ward 6 race ended in a tie — 1,476 to 1,476. The choice fell to the city council, which picked Sandra Vasecka over Sean Patrick McCoy. 

Tuesday’s election was a rematch between the two Missoula candidates. About the same number of people voted. The final result? McCoy 1,764, Vasecka 1,163. 

The post Can you win an election by two votes in Montana? Yes. It just happened. appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Things are about to get unusually western for Democrats in Montana’s more competitive U.S. House seat. 

One month after pledging to fight for more of the state’s rural vote, Democrats have fielded not one but two western House district candidates with ranch roots and military experience.

Russell Cleveland, 40, of rural Stevensville, who has been a candidate since March, drew a challenger Thursday in Simms native Matt Rains. Both tout ranching family roots and Republican parents. Cleveland is a former aviation electrician in the U.S. Navy. Rains is a West Point graduate and Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot. 

Cleveland lives on a ranch property near St. Regis. Rains, 45, lives on a production livestock ranch near Simms, which isn’t in the western district. Members of the House don’t have to reside in the district they represent. 

If Montana voters have a type, rural and veteran could be it. Three of the four Republicans who comprise Montana’s congressional delegation are veterans. In the 2024 U.S. Senate race, Republican political newcomer Tim Sheehy, a Navy veteran who owns a cattle ranch, defeated Democratic former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a dryland farmer who had prevailed in three previous elections despite winning more than 50% of the vote only once. Tester was the last statewide Democrat officeholder in Montana when he lost that race.

The one non-veteran in Montana’s federal delegation currently is two-term U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who is on the ballot in 2026. 

“No, I don’t think we have a type,” Rains said of Montana voters. “Ten percent of the population are veterans of some degree or another. So, I mean, it’s probably one of the most identifiable components of who we are as Montanans. So, it’s important. But in terms of the type, no, I mean calling yourself a veteran, I mean, that’s a huge spectrum.”

The western U.S. House district race is likely to be the state’s most competitive federal race of 2026. Cleveland in town hall meetings and Rains’s introductory literature tell voters that Tester prevailed in western Montana in his 2024 bid while losing the state as a whole by 43,000 votes. 

“He won this district. So, he didn’t lose it all,” Cleveland told a Bozeman audience in late September. In rural Montana, Cleveland tells his audience that even in the more urban western part of the state, agriculture matters. 

“So, we still have a huge agricultural presence, especially in southwest Montana. Dillon and places like that, huge cattle ranches. So, it still impacts us, maybe not to the extent of eastern Montana, but public lands play into that, too,” he said. 

State election data shows Tester picking up 1,729 more votes than Sheehy in the 16 counties of the western U.S. House district and 49.4% of the district’s vote overall, with Green Party and Libertarian candidates making up the difference.

The 2024 western district House race between incumbent Republican Ryan Zinke and two-time Democratic challenger Monica Tranel was less competitive, with Zinke picking up nearly 25,000 more votes, a 7-percentage point advantage. Support for the Republican was better in 2024 than in 2022, the first year the newly created district was on the ballot.

Appealing to rural voters was a recurring message at a recent state Democratic Party convention in Livingston last month. Tester phoned in to caution against focusing on “blue districts.”

“The Democratic Party is in trouble. We have done it to ourselves. We have focused on blue districts and not on other districts throughout the state,” Tester told conventioneers. “We are seen in polling as woke and weak.”

The party’s new chair, former Missoula state senator Shannon O’Brien, said “We don’t just provide lip service for our rural Democrats, we really travel, go out, and get to them — listen to them — and recruit candidates.” 

The trend in Montana Democratic candidates for U.S. House has long been not only urban, but female. Ten of the party’s 16 general election candidates for U.S. House since 2000 have been women, who took some of the most bruising outcomes in Montana statewide elections. Montana’s eastern House district favors Republicans by as much as 20 points. 

The post Democratic candidates emphasize ranch roots and military experience in Montana’s western House primary appeared first on Montana Free Press.