This article is part of a series on the youth-led constitutional climate change lawsuit Held v. Montana. The rest of the series can be read at mtclimatecase.flatheadbeacon.com. This project is produced by the Flathead Beacon newsroom, in collaboration with Montana Free Press, and is supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship.

On Monday morning, when a Montana judge issued a ruling favoring young environmental advocates in the constitutional climate change lawsuit Held v. Montana, Lander Busse, one of the 16 youth plaintiffs, was in a raft on the Flathead River.

When told by his father that the decision favored the plaintiffs, Lander said, “Hell yes, we won, and I am going fishing,” before floating out of cell service, according to his father’s telling of the exchange.

As Busse, 18, drifted out of reach of reporters, the response to the landmark decision rippled across the globe, and in its wake a torrent of analysis has poured in from legal observers, scientific experts, environmental advocates, policymakers and industry stakeholders, all trying to paint a picture of Montana’s future through the legal lens of the verdict, as well as its long-term policy implications.

Held v. Montana made history as the first youth-led constitutional climate change lawsuit to go to trial, with a seven-day trial unfolding in a Helena district courtroom in June.

The lawsuit alleged the state had violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment,” and focused on a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) that prohibits state agencies from considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts while conducting environmental reviews.

The ruling by Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley is the first legal opinion of its kind, spelling out the environmental harms caused by greenhouse gas emissions as well as the effects of climate change on the physical and mental well-being of young people.

Michael Gerrard, the founder of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said he was “smiling ear to ear” when he read the Aug. 14 decision, which he characterized as the “strongest decision on climate change ever issued by any court.”

“The court resoundingly affirmed what the climate scientists are saying, and it will become ever harder to attack basic climate science in the court, where facts matter,” Gerrard said.

The 103-page Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order draws a correlation between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and tangible changes to the environment, and it appraises Montana’s contribution to the broader consequences of climate change.

“Montana’s GHG contributions are not de minimis but are nationally and globally significant. Montana’s GHG emissions cause and contribute to climate change and Plaintiffs’ injuries and reduce the opportunity to alleviate Plaintiffs’ injuries,” according to language in the ruling that zeroes in on one of the state’s foundational arguments.

Six states and roughly 150 countries have codified the right to a clean environment in their constitutions, similar to the Montana provision the case was predicated on, and legal experts say the Held ruling may come into play in those jurisdictions.

“There’s a lot of excitement about Montana playing an early role in developing new legal approaches to this problem,” said Michelle Bryan, a University of Montana law professor who specializes in natural resource and environmental law. “All these other cases we see now are potentially going to trial, and this decision, and whatever comes out on appeal, will be read by judges all over. Even though they’re not bound by this precedent, they’ll be influenced by what Judge Seeley and the Montana Supreme Court had to say.”

Emily Flower, a spokesperson for the Montana attorney general’s office, said the state will appeal the ruling. In a statement, Flower characterized the ruling as “absurd” and called Seeley an “ideological judge.”

Speculating about what the Montana Supreme Court might do on appeal, retired Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson called the case a “slam dunk home run” and said he expects the state’s high court will have a difficult time overturning the decision.

“I think this is one of the most powerful decisions I’ve ever read on the environment in Montana,” said Nelson, who sat on the state Supreme Court for nearly two decades.

Nelson said the decision’s biggest implication is the court’s finding that climate change is covered by Article II, Section 3 of the Montana Constitution, the right to a “clean and healthful environment.”

“That’s important. One could think it’s common sense to make that connection, but the court has never said that,” Nelson said. “She also found that the state and Legislature have violated their mandatory duties under Article IX, Section 1 to maintain and improve the environment for this and future generations. That’s going to come out in other environmental cases that go before the court.”

“I think this is one of the most powerful decisions I’ve ever read on the environment in Montana.”

Retired Montana Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson

Gerrard and Bryan both highlighted the extent to which Seeley’s ruling focused on the source of climate change and the individual harm reported by the plaintiffs — a section spanning roughly 50 pages — and the state’s role in furthering both.

Bryan said future questions will revolve around whether an agency review of greenhouse gas emissions adequately meets the constitutional provision for a clean and healthful environment. “The court’s saying that the climate isn’t an issue you can skip during an environmental review — our Constitution requires you to consider it,” she said.

The ruling also suggests that part of an environmental review is considering alternative actions and projects, which in the energy arena could mean considering alternatives to carbon-based fuels.

Bryan said the impetus is now on state regulatory agencies like the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) tasked with permitting major energy projects to implement changes in Montana.

“The most important part of the ruling is that the government bodies like the DNRC, DEQ and [Montana Department of Transportation] will have to figure out the best way to consider greenhouse gas emissions, which is something other states, and the federal government, are grappling with,” Bryan said. “A lot of work is left to do in terms of figuring out how to implement greenhouse gas reviews into the agency processes.”

In her verdict, Seeley wrote that it is possible to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions that result from fossil fuel extraction, processing, transportation and consumption activities authorized by state agencies. She cited permitting decisions prior to 2011 when agencies quantified and disclosed such emissions. The ruling, however, does not instruct the state on how to quantify emissions, or where the line should be drawn to decline a new permit.

Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, characterized the ruling as both far-reaching and unprecedented during a Public Service Commission meeting on Aug. 15. Hedges, who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs and has tracked energy policy in Montana for three decades, said that’s largely due to the decision’s implications for the energy permitting process.

“This changes everything,” she said. “The court ruled that the state must be able to deny fossil fuel projects — something the state has never done before.”

“The state must either have discretion to deny permits for fossil fuel activities when the activities would result in greenhouse gas emissions that cause unconstitutional degradation and depletion of Montana’s environment and natural resources, or the permitting statutes themselves must be unconstitutional,” Hedges said, pulling language directly from the ruling.

In addition to finding that cataloging greenhouse gas emissions is technically feasible, Seeley wrote that a transition to renewable energy is “economically feasible and technologically available to employ in Montana.” She added that there is a roadmap for a transition to such energy sources available that will “create jobs, reduce air pollution, and save lives and costs associated with air pollution” in addition to garnering climate benefits.

During the trial, Stanford University Atmosphere/Energy Director Mark Jacobson said Montana has “incredible” renewable energy potential, particularly in regard to wind generation. Jacobson said his modeling demonstrates that the state could easily meet its energy needs and keep the grid stable by pairing existing hydropower generation with expanded wind and solar power, backed up with battery storage.

Seeley also cited Jacobson’s calculation that wind and solar cost about half what a new natural gas project does, and are “even cheaper compared to coal” in her order.

Entities representing or heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry expressed dismay with the decision and emphasized the uncertainties it raises, while Montana-based renewable energy advocates said it will accelerate a transition that’s already underway.

Montana Petroleum Association Executive Director Alan Olson said the ruling amounts to job security for lawyers and will prove difficult to implement, given the technical challenges associated with emissions accounting. Olson also said he fears an abrupt transition to renewables would be expensive for ratepayers when electricity demand surges and would shrink the tax and philanthropic footprints of companies like Signal Peak Energy, which owns a coal mine in Musselshell County that employs about 280 people.

Olson added that whatever regulatory shifts are coming, they won’t happen overnight. “It’s going to be a long process to conform with this,” Olson said. “You’re going to need statutory changes, you’re going to need rule changes.”

Steve Fitzpatrick, a Republican lawmaker from Great Falls who urged his colleagues in the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 971, a measure barring the state from considering greenhouse gas impacts in environmental reviews that Seeley struck down in her ruling, echoed that sentiment. Between the state’s appeal and the Legislature’s input in future legislative sessions, “it’s too early to say what kind of impact this case is going to have,” he said.

“In my opinion, all [Seeley] has really done is given the Legislature an invitation to come in and redraft MEPA with respect to greenhouse gas impacts or out-of-state impacts,” he said, adding that in his estimation Seeley’s order gave the plaintiffs “20%” of what they wanted.

A requirement to analyze greenhouse gas emissions might make that process “longer and more cumbersome and more expensive,” but it doesn’t amount to a wholesale prohibition on new coal mines or gas plants, he argued.

“In my opinion, all [Judge Seeley] has really done is given the Legislature an invitation to come in and redraft MEPA with respect to greenhouse gas impacts or out-of-state impacts.”

Senate Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls

Makenna Sellers, executive director for the Montana Renewable Energy Association, said in an email that the Held ruling could make carbon-free projects more attractive in Montana, and described her industry’s contribution as “part and parcel to Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.”

Bruce Spencer, who lobbies on behalf of large wind and solar developers for the Montana Energy Business Alliance, said he anticipates clean energy will continue expanding in Montana so long as the regulatory climate remains stable for would-be investors.

“MEBA is just hopeful that Montana’s business conditions will continue to permit renewable energy development as part of Montana’s energy portfolio,” he added.

Despite vast coal reserves — more than any other state in the country — the state is trending more and more toward renewables, according to a 2023 report released by DEQ. “Development of new in-state generation is being led by wind resources, natural gas, solar assets and, increasingly, large-scale batteries.” The agency’s analysis found that wind-generated capacity has doubled in the past decade and is close to equaling coal-fired capacity in the state.

Bryan, the University of Montana law professor, found irony in the decision being handed down at a time when Montana is facing multiple wildfire outbreaks, extreme heat, record low streamflows and drought conditions — all environmental impacts that scientists tied to climate change during the trial.

“It just underscores the problem that stimulated the trial: We’re going in the wrong direction,” said Jack Stanford, the former director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station, who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. “Everyone who depends on water and Montana’s rivers is going to feel the effects of this climate warming and the loss of flow and volume in our streams and rivers.”

“I think we’re just pleased that the trial went our way and hope that Montana’s government steps up to the plate and takes a few swings in favor of the environment instead of fossil fuel development,” Stanford said.

The post ‘This changes everything’: Experts respond to Held v. Montana climate ruling appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Minnesota teachers renewing their license must now undergo training about Native American history and culture.

The Legislature passed a law this year requiring training for K-12 teachers about the “cultural heritage and contemporary contributions of American Indians, with particular emphasis on Minnesota Tribal Nations,” in order to renew their license.

The requirement goes into effect for less-experienced teachers Tuesday and the remainder of the teaching corps Jan. 1.

Teachers already must fulfill multiple requirements to renew their licenses, including training on suicide prevention and reading preparation.

In addition, they are required to undergo cultural competency training — which includes instruction on how to best serve Native American students — to renew their licenses, but Native American-specific training will eventually be its own requirement.

The Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is working on the Native American history rollout and exactly what the training will include. Until then, teachers can fulfill the new requirement under the existing cultural competency training.

In his education budget, Gov. Tim Walz recommended Native American history renewal requirement for teachers and argued the current cultural competency requirements for teachers didn’t dedicate enough time specifically to Native American history.

“Given the rich history of American Indians and their contemporary contributions, more time and resources should be provided to Minnesota educators,” Walz’s budget proposal stated.

Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union, said in a statement that it supports the new training requirement, but noted it adds an additional burden for teachers.

“Minnesota’s Indigenous history is complex, rich and long, and it has been far too often ignored in both U.S. and Minnesota history lessons,” said Education Minnesota President Denise Specht. “At the same time, we have to be aware of the extra time and effort each new requirement adds to the plates of educators, and give them the adequate time and training they need to address these important pieces of delivering a well-rounded education.”

The state licensing board said it will release more information about the requirement’s specifics in the coming weeks.

Minnesota’s academic standards for students include material about the cultural heritage and contributions of Native Americans and the tribal nations with which Minnesota shares borders. The Legislature this past session also mandated school districts offer curriculum on the Holocaust, the genocide of Indigenous people and the removal of Native Americans from Minnesota.

This article was first published in the Minnesota Reformer. 

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This article is part of a series on the youth-led constitutional climate change lawsuit Held v. Montana. The rest of the series can be read at mtclimatecase.flatheadbeacon.com. This project is produced by the Flathead Beacon newsroom, in collaboration with Montana Free Press, and is supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship.

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A Montana district judge on Monday issued a ruling in the nation’s first constitutional climate change trial declaring the youth plaintiffs have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment” while revoking two Montana statutes. The state attorney general’s office said it will appeal the ruling.

The 103-page order by Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley comes two months after the landmark Held v. Montana trial took place in Helena, and explicitly states that Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are “proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment, and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs.” It also rolls back two laws enacted by Montana’s Republican-led Legislature this year, House Bill 971 and Senate Bill 557, which made changes to the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA).

“Plaintiffs have proven that as children and youth, they are disproportionately harmed by fossil fuel pollution and climate impacts,” the order states. “The Defendants have the authority under the statues by which they operate to protect Montana’s environment and natural resources, protect the health and safety of Montana’s youth, and alleviate and avoid climate impacts by limiting fossil fuel activities that occur in Montana when the MEPA analysis shows that those activities are resulting in degradation or other harms which violate the Montana Constitution,” the order continues.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind to reach trial, was filed by 16 youth plaintiffs from across Montana who alleged the state violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by promoting the fossil fuel industry and exacerbating climate change.

“As youth, we are exposed to a lot of knowledge about climate change. We can’t keep passing it on to the next generation when we’re being told about all the impacts that are already happening,” Rikki Held, the suit’s lead plaintiff, told the Flathead Beacon before the trial. “In some ways, our generation feels a lot of pressure, kind of a burden, to make something happen because it’s our lives that are at risk.”

The complaint focused on a provision in MEPA that prohibits state agencies from considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts while conducting environmental reviews.

Seeley’s ruling declared that portion of MEPA unconstitutional, as well as a section enacted by SB 557 requiring groups challenging state permitting actions to post a bond before filing a lawsuit and to seek a preliminary injunction, a tough-to-meet legal standard that would immediately halt a project.

“We’re very pleased with the ruling,” Roger Sullivan, a Kalispell-based attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Beacon Monday. “It is stunning in its scope, and I think that the message from the judicial branch is very clear. The task will now be for the executive branch of our state government and the Legislature to abide by this order.”

In a statement, Julia Olson, executive director of the Oregon-based law firm Our Children’s Trust, which brought the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate.”

“For the first time in U.S. history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people,” Olson said in a prepared statement. “As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.”

Olson said the ruling provides an evidentiary record and legal precedent that will influence future climate-related lawsuits. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law currently tracks 2,424 climate-change related legal cases in the world, 1,591 of which are filed in U.S. jurisdictions, including two upcoming Our Children’s Trust trials. Next summer, a youth-led climate case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation will proceed to trial, while a federal judge ruled earlier this summer that Juliana v. United States is also cleared for trial.

Attorneys with the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC), which served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said Seeley’s ruling “underscores the reality that Montana’s government is actively working to undermine our constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.”

“For the first time in U.S. history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people.”

Our Children’s Trust Executive Director Julia Olson

“Judge Seeley’s decision comes at a time when we’re seeing the impacts of climate change accelerate — from low streamflows and lake levels to unprecedented heat waves, floods, and wildfires,” according to a prepared statement by Melissa Hornbein, senior attorney with WELC. “These are the climate realities the youth plaintiffs and expert witnesses told us about on the stand, while the state disclaimed any responsibility and dismissed them. We’re relieved that the court recognized that these youth plaintiffs are already feeling the impacts of the climate crisis, as well as the dangers threatening their future if the state doesn’t take meaningful action to address it.”

Much of the landmark trial that unfolded over seven days in June centered on the connection between Montana’s warming climate and the harm alleged by the plaintiffs, who testified that their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment” has been violated by the state’s practice of promoting and permitting the fossil fuel industry, thereby contributing to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs spent five days of the trial calling on expert witnesses — including leading climate scientists, glaciologists, policy experts and mental health professionals — to describe the harms the plaintiffs say they have suffered because of Montana’s promotion and permitting of the fossil fuel industry. Ten of the young plaintiffs, ranging in age from 14 to 22, also took the stand to describe how their quality of life has been compromised by both the real-time effects of climate change and its impending impacts.

The state, meanwhile, disputed the evidence that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change in a meaningful way, and denied that Montana’s increasingly severe wildland fire seasons and drought are linked to its legacy of supporting fossil-fuel burning projects reliant on coal, oil and gas.

The entirety of the state’s defense spanned less than one full day of trial, compared to the five days during which plaintiffs’ attorneys called witnesses. The defense called just one expert witness, an economist, whose testimony Seeley said “was not well-supported, contained errors, and was not given weight by the Court.”

Seeley’s ruling states that Montana’s constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment includes climate, and affirms the connection between greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and harm to Montana’s youth.

The court also found that allowing the state to consider climate change in permitting questions “would provide the clear information needed to conform their decision-making to the best science and their constitutional duties and constraints and give them the necessary information to deny permits for fossil fuel activities when inconsistent with protecting Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

Emily Flower, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, called the ruling “absurd” and described the trial as a “tax-payer funded publicity stunt” in a statement. “The State will appeal,” she said. 

The post Judge rules in favor of youth plaintiffs in Montana climate lawsuit appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Federal regulators are urging Montana health officials to fix shortcomings in the state’s Medicaid redetermination process, expressing “concerns” that the state may be disenrolling people who are eligible for the public health insurance and creating barriers for others through long wait times at call centers and during the application process.

The state began reassessing the eligibility of the more than 320,000 people on Montana Medicaid in April with the lifting of the federally-designated COVID-19 public health emergency, which barred states from removing people from the program during the pandemic. The state has since reported removing 34,204 people from the rolls in April and May, roughly half of all people reviewed. Data for June is still pending.

In an August 9 letter addressed to Montana’s Medicaid Director Mike Randol, an official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the state’s May data showed an average call center wait time of 42 minutes and an average call abandonment of 40%. Those metrics are among the worst in the country — only Missouri had a longer average wait time of 48 minutes and a slightly higher drop rate. Nevada had a dropped call rate of 56%.

Both of Montana’s call metrics have worsened since March and April when the state reported an average wait time of 37 minutes and 35% of calls abandoned.

The federal agency also flagged the 36% of Montanans reviewed in May who lost coverage because of procedural errors such as failing to return paperwork or submit all the required information. Many of those individuals, including children, could still be eligible for the health insurance program, the letter said. 

“While CMS expects procedural terminations, a high rate of procedural terminations may indicate that beneficiaries may not be receiving notices, are unable to understand them, or are unable to submit their renewal through the required modalities,” the agency said.

The letter also indicated that 15% of the income-based applicants who recently applied for Medicaid took the state longer than 45 days to process, “exceeding the regulatory requirements.” The notice said that expeditious processing of new applications, including some who may be re-applying after realizing they lost coverage, was “imperative.”

Out of 50 states that received letters about their recent data, the news site Politico reported that thirty-six were notified of at least one concern about call center wait times, application processing, or procedural disenrollments. Only five states — Montana, Florida, Rhode Island, Alaska and New Mexico — were dinged for all three categories.

In response to a request for comment on the federal letter, Department of Public Health and Human Services spokesperson Jon Ebelt said Friday that the department has been trying to simplify the phone tree options at call centers, adjust staffing levels and modifying its call-back protocol to prioritize enrollees who are most at risk of losing coverage. The department will also be starting a public service announcement campaign “in the coming weeks” that Ebelt said would run through the duration of the redetermination process, slated to end in January 2024. 

“CMS sent helpful feedback to states this week,” Ebelt said. “We continue to closely monitor, evaluate, and strengthen our Medicaid redetermination process with a laser focus on ensuring coverage for eligible Montanans.”

The health department in November awarded a more-than-$2.25 million contract to Public Consulting Group LLC, a private contractor, to boost staffing levels for processing Medicaid renewals. On its website, PCG said it has allocated 40 staff to the contract. 

Asked how the recent disenrollment and call center data highlighted by CMS reflect Gov. Greg Gianforte’s stated commitment to “customer service” from state agencies, Deputy Communications Director Brooke Metrione said the governor “has full confidence in DPHHS as it undertakes the overdue Medicaid redetermination process, ensuring eligible Montanans maintain their coverage while guarding against fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer resources.”

In recent months, advocates for Medicaid enrollees and Democratic lawmakers have called on Gianforte and the health department to pause redeterminations until the state can resolve issues leading to high rates of procedural terminations. The Montana Budget and Policy Center and Montana Women Vote, groups that lobby on behalf of low-income Montanans, reiterated that stance in a July letter to CMS. The outreach recounted reports of long call center wait times, confusion about the process and sudden disenrollments.

“Given the serious and endemic nature of these issues, we believe that the large number of Montanans being disenrolled includes a high percentage of people who have not had a fair and timely redetermination process and who may still be eligible for coverage. We believe the state should consider pausing or slowing the rate of redetermination until these issues can be addressed,” the letter said. One of the signatories was Rep. SJ Howell, D-Missoula, who works as executive director of Montana Women Vote.

In addition to the 71,930 enrollees reevaluated in April and May, the department began reevaluating the eligibility of another 38,372 people in June, according to its public dashboard. About 21% of that group had had their coverage renewed as of the dashboard’s last update in mid-July. Other applications are still being processed and roughly 45% of people under review hadn’t responded to the department’s requests for information. 

The department has said it plans to update the dashboard once a month.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Aug. 11 to include a response from the state health department. 

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Fire season is underway in Montana, with a number of active fires burning more than 1,000 acres.

Wildfire crews are battling several on the Flathead Indian Reservation; with three of the largest fires being the Niarada, Big Knife and Middle Ridge fires.

A community meeting is planned for Thursday, Aug. 10 at the Arlee Community Center regarding the Niarada, Big Knife fires and another fire, the Mill Pocket fire.

The largest fire in the state is the Niarada and is burning west of Elmo on the northern end of the reservation. It was ignited by lightning on July 30.

The forest in the area involved in the fire includes a mix of timber, including some that is downed and dead. The area also has brush and shorter grass near the valley bottom, according to Inciweb, an interagency all-risk incident information management system.

As of Wednesday morning, the fire had burned more than 20,000 acres and is 25 percent contained, according to MTfireinfo.org.

From the Aug. 9 fire update from Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Division of Fire, four structure have been lost since the fire was initially ignited although it does not specify what type of structures.

Additionally, areas near the base of the mountains near the Big Knife fire have been placed in pre-evacuation status by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. The same office downgraded areas near the Niarada from “evacuation” to “pre-evacuation warning.”

“A PRE-EVACUATION WARNING means you may return to your home. However, as there is still a potential threat from the Niarada Fire,” the press release states.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office also asks people in the area to refrain from bring back evacuated livestock until the area has been downgraded to “ready.”

The Mill Pocket fire is burning to the west of the Niarada, far enough to keep both fires separated, Northern Rockies Team 3 public information officer Stefani Spencer told ICT.

“So the Mill Pocket is west, directly west of one portion of the Niarada and we have [fire] line around the Mill Pocket on the east side and the Niarada on the west side where they face each other,” Spencer said. “So we have good line around both of those fires.”

She added that the Mill Pocket is pretty well contained except for a portion on the west side near Mill Creek that is steep country and difficult to get crew to the area.

There are a number of types of personnel working the fires, including two interagency hotshot crews on the Niarada. Hotshot crews are specifically, highly trained firefighters that often take on some of the most difficult assignments.

Also, several types of aircraft have been assisting when needed. Helicopters have primarily been used to drop water but larger planes called “scoopers” and single engine planes have done the same.

Earlier this summer, fires in Canada led to air quality alerts in portions of the midwest and eastern United States. At one point, thirteen First Nations were had to be evacuated and more were on the frontlines.

The Associated Press reported erratic winds in Southern California made it difficult for firefighters to handle two major fires in the state.

On the island of Maui, six people were killed in a wildfire and injured at least two dozen others. The fire destroyed dozens of homes and businesses in Lahaina Town, a popular shopping and dining area, the AP reported.

Looking forward, weather is forecasted to be in the mid-to-high 80s with potential wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour. Spencer said they are keeping an eye on areas of the fires that will be most affected by the winds.

“Trying to get measures in place now while we have this break in the weather, and we got that rain, which really helped us out,” she said. “So we’re trying to take advantage of this break that we have in fire activity to really secure those areas that would be most affected by the wind that we’re expecting to come in.”

A stage 2 fire restriction is in place across the Flathead Indian Reservation. “No campfires are allowed, no smoking outside of vehicles, no operating combustible engines between 1PM-1PM, no operating vehicles off designated roads and trails,” a press release said.

The latest and daily information on the fires can be found on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Division of Fire Facebook page.

The post Fires burn across Montana’s Flathead reservation appeared first on Buffalo’s Fire.

When Autumn Nelson decided she was ready to seek treatment for her alcoholism, she knew she had to act fast.

“When someone with an addiction says, ‘I need help,’ we’re begging,” she said. “We want it.”

Nelson, who lives on the Blackfeet Reservation, knew she might have to leave home to get the help she needed. Crystal Creek Lodge provides inpatient and outpatient treatment on the reservation, but community members say the place is almost always at capacity. Journey to Recovery, another facility on the reservation, provides outpatient services primarily focused on supporting individuals after they return from inpatient treatment. And sometimes, it can be helpful for people struggling with addiction to leave their environment and disconnect from people in their circles who may be using.

So when Journey to Recovery gave Nelson the contact information for a treatment center in Arizona, Nelson was hopeful. She was ready to get clean. Little did she know she’d soon be caught up in a national scandal.

Phoenix House Recovery, a treatment center in Arizona, paid for Nelson’s plane ticket to Arizona, and Nelson was eager for a fresh start. Her father died of cancer three years ago, and just before his death, her younger brother died in a car accident.

“That really set my alcoholism off,” she said. “I kind of just stepped out of reality for a while.”

But Phoenix House Recovery wasn’t what Nelson had imagined. She has a background in health care and had been to other treatment centers in the past, and as time went on, she grew suspicious about how the facility was run.

“I started asking questions,” Nelson said. “Like, ‘Where’s the 12-step plan? Why isn’t that in our daily agenda? Why aren’t we learning about triggers, external and internal? Where is our life skills training? Why aren’t we building resumés? Why is there one therapist for 30 patients?’ I asked the clients and staff, and they kicked me out the next day.”

Out on the streets in 100-plus degree weather, Nelson had to find somewhere to go. She looked into other sober living homes but grew concerned when she was offered alcohol and drugs at one of them. She didn’t know who she could trust.

“I was scared,” she said. “I’m thousands of miles away from my family and my home. I was freaking out. I was hysterical.”

While Nelson ultimately made it home to the Blackfeet Reservation, her experience in Arizona is not uncommon.

What happened to her has happened to thousands of other Native Americans in Arizona amid a widespread Medicaid fraud scheme, where treatment centers billed the state thousands of dollars per patient for services that were not actually provided. Indigenous people from Montana, Arizona, New Mexico and South Dakota were recruited to get treatment at these fraudulent facilities, and experts estimate that at least 100 Native Americans from Montana are tangled in the scam.

The scheme defrauded Arizona taxpayers, and at these fraudulent sober living homes, some clients were given drugs and alcohol. Others were told to get on food stamps. And some people seeking treatment were paid to recruit more Native Americans to these facilities. As the fraudulent treatment centers have shuttered amid a government crackdown, Montana tribes and grassroots advocates are scrambling to get their relatives home. But because these facilities changed clients’ state of residency to Arizona for billing purposes, it’s even harder for tribes and families in Montana to locate their loved ones.

What exactly is happening in Arizona?

Arizona officials have called it “a stunning failure of government.”

In a widespread scam, treatment facilities in Arizona billed for nonexistent services, and the money was paid through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), Arizona’s Medicaid program. The scam targeted Native Americans because a loophole in AHCCCS’s American Indian Health Program allowed individuals to pose as a treatment facility.

Reva Stewart, who launched the campaign #StolenPeopleStolenBenefits to raise awareness of the fraud, said experts have traced the origins of the scam to the pandemic.

“They targeted Native Americans because the American Indian Health Plan would pay for everything they documented,” she explained. “Once these places found out they could get something like $1,700 per day per person, you saw them popping up everywhere. With that money, one home can make $2 million in two weeks. I even saw a YouTube video on how to open a sober living home in 15 minutes.”

The Arizona Mirror reported that AHCCCS was billed $53.5 million under the outpatient behavioral health clinic code in 2019. In 2020, it more than doubled to $132.6 million, and by 2022 it exploded to $668 million.

The FBI, which is investigating the fraud, is seeking to contact victims of the scam. The agency said in some cases, organizers pick up addicts at popular gathering places; sometimes individuals are given alcohol during transport; and clients are told to obtain food stamps during their time in treatment even though their enrollment brings funding to the home. The FBI investigation has resulted in at least 45 indictments by the office of the Arizona Attorney General, and at least $75 million has been seized.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs in May announced, according to The Associated Press, that the homes defrauded the state of hundreds of millions of dollars. AHCCCS has since suspended payments to hundreds of providers in the state.

As these homes have closed, Native American residents are left on the streets of Arizona in temperatures nearing 115 degrees. Some people have been reported missing, and others have turned up dead.

‘I blame them’

Mona Bear Medicine, Blackfeet, said when her 25-year-old son RayDel Calf Looking went to Phoenix for treatment, she had high hopes for him.

Calf Looking completed a longer treatment program, lasting 60 or 90 days, and Bear Medicine said he was doing well. There are many highly regarded treatment facilities in Arizona that have effective programs and competent staff, and plenty of Montana tribal members speak highly of them.

“He sent a selfie over Christmas, and he looked really healthy,” Bear Medicine said of her son. “He looked good. And I could tell he was doing good for himself.”

Bear Medicine said her son started drinking in high school, but she didn’t realize he was doing drugs until about five years ago. Calf Looking was gay, and Bear Medicine said he struggled to come out and faced adversity when people he loved didn’t accept him.

“I think that was the reason he got into drugs,” she said. “He didn’t know how to come out. He was teased for it, and it hurt him. He started doing different drugs, and it got worse and worse, and he got into meth. It was hard for me to realize the extent of it, and I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be on my family.”

Calf Looking completed the long-term program, and then went to a sober-living home in Arizona, called Calm Integrated Healthcare. Bear Medicine said, “That’s when the problems started.”

In February, Bear Medicine hadn’t heard from her son in a while, and she was worried. She and her sister flew down to Arizona and found Calf Looking, who had walked out of the home and appeared to be intoxicated.

“He was disappointed in himself for relapsing,” Bear Medicine recalled.

Bear Medicine took her son back to Calm Integrated Healthcare and almost immediately got a bad feeling about the place. She said her son was clearly intoxicated, and the staff at Calm Integrated said it was fine for him to stay with Bear Medicine at her motel for a few days.

“It was so shady,” Bear Medicine said. “When she said RayDel could stay with us, I asked, ‘What does he need to do? Does he need to go to class?’ And she just said, ‘No, he doesn’t need to do anything.’ When I drove away, I said to RayDel, ‘I’m so confused. I thought sober living was sober.’ And he said, ‘They don’t care as long as they get your money.’”

When Calf Looking stayed with Bear Medicine at the motel, he kept drinking, and after Bear Medicine left, she knew he was still drinking, even though he’d returned to the sober-living home.

In late March, Calf Looking’s cousin, Vandree Old Person, was found dead on the Blackfeet Reservation, and Calf Looking, who was supposed to fly home to be a pallbearer, was taking the death hard. Again, Bear Medicine didn’t hear from him, and again, she was worried.

One day in April, Bear Medicine got a call from a detective.

“When she called, I thought, ‘What did he do now?’” Bear Medicine recalled. “I said, ‘Is he in jail? Is he hurt?’ And she said, ‘No.’ Then she asked me, ‘Is anyone with you?’ and that’s when it started clicking. I said, ‘Oh my God. Is he dead?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’”

The detective told Bear Medicine that her son broke into a house while intoxicated and the homeowner, fearing for his life, shot Calf Looking as he walked up the stairs of his home. Bear Medicine said her son was shot in the back, which she finds incongruous with the detective’s recounting. And she still hasn’t received an autopsy. She was told the FBI is investigating her son’s case, but months later, she still hasn’t heard from the federal agency.

Calm Integrated Healthcare has told Bear Medicine that her son walked out of their facility and was not under their care at the time he was killed, but Bear Medicine maintains that the sober-living home had a part in his death.

“I do think the center was responsible for his death,” she said. “They took the money but still let him drink. He was really trying. He really did try, but it was so easy for him to have a free place to stay that allowed him to drink. I blame them. I really blame them.”

AHCCCS payments to Calm Integrated Healthcare were suspended on May 15 — about a month after Calf Looking was killed.

‘It’s systemic’

Just as with Autumn Nelson, Journey to Recovery in Browning connected Josh Racine to a treatment center in Arizona. A spokesperson for Journey to Recovery was not available for comment.

Racine, Blackfeet, flew out to Sunrise Native Recovery, an alcohol and drug treatment center in Scottsdale, in March. About a month later, he was on the streets.

Laura McGee, Racine’s sister, didn’t know where he was or what happened, but she was determined to find him. She called Sunrise Native Recovery, but they were no help. She called the hospitals in the area, but no luck there, either. Racine would occasionally ask her to send him food at the treatment center — something McGee thought was odd — so she scoured previous food orders to try and nail down a timeline of his disappearance. She scrutinized past texts with her brother to pinpoint a location, but her efforts felt futile.

“I was panicking because I knew what had happened to RayDel,” she said. “It was a feeling I can’t even describe. We lost our mother suddenly, and seven months later, our stepdad, who primarily raised Josh, died. And then our grandmother died, and our first cousin died of an overdose. So Josh is already an addict and now he’s out on the streets dealing with sudden death.”

As McGee did more research, she learned about the hundreds of other sober-living homes in Arizona that had been shut down. It became clear that the problem was bigger than just her and her brother, so she approached the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council.

“I told council, ‘I need help,’” she recalled. “’You sent him there through a program on this reservation. I need help getting him back.’”

The council ultimately paid for a few of McGee’s family members to fly to Arizona, and they successfully brought Racine home, but McGee’s work was not done. Upon her brother’s return, she began to piece together the broken system.

Through conversations with her brother, McGee said she learned that Sunrise charged AHCCCS at least $117,000 in one month for services related to Racine — services that Racine himself said he did not receive.

“That was for one month for one person,” McGee said. “So imagine doing that for 20 or 80 people in a facility. It adds up.”

Racine told McGee that the centers would give clients $50 a week to live on, and he was reportedly told by Sunrise that if he recruited other Native Americans, they would reward him with $100.

“It’s systemic,” McGee said. “There weren’t protocols, and people were being taken advantage of.”

McGee said people struggling with addiction are a particularly vulnerable population, which worked to the scheme’s advantage.

“These are addicts who have lost the trust of their families,” she said. “So when they say, ‘This treatment center isn’t good. They’re putting me out on the street,’ families weren’t believing them. These people knew that and used it against them.”

That’s exactly what happened to Wendy Bremner. Her daughter Brooke Running Crane, Blackfeet, also went to Sunrise, and Running Crane was also suspicious of the facility. She told her mother she wasn’t comfortable at Sunrise and was scared to be there. But Bremner didn’t know what to do.

“I didn’t want to be an enabler,” she said. “I don’t know if what she’s telling me is true. I don’t want to interfere with treatment.”

Later, Running Crane’s anxiety about Sunrise rose to a breaking point, and she was hospitalized for a panic attack. Sunrise told Bremner that her daughter could not return to the facility, and as far as Bremner could tell, her daughter was going to be discharged from the hospital on to the streets.

Bremner called Sunrise over and over again until they finally agreed to help transfer Running Crane to another facility. Running Crane’s new facility is a good one, but Bremner said she doesn’t know what would’ve happened to her daughter if she hadn’t intervened.

“It was really scary,” she said. “She didn’t have anywhere to go, and I was just calling people saying, ‘You can’t just throw my daughter out.’”

Bremner said her daughter ended up at Sunrise because she’d heard of several people in Browning who’d gone there. And when Running Crane expressed that she wanted to receive treatment, Bremner said the treatment facilities in Arizona “felt like a miracle.”

“Families are desperate to get their people help when they say, ‘I want to go to treatment,’” she said. “It’s very rare, so at that moment, you really want to get them in somewhere while they’re ready to go. It’s so hard to get treatment here, and sending her far away is scary, but we wanted her to get help.”

AHCCCS payments to Sunrise Native Wellness were suspended on July 21 — almost two months after Racine went missing and five months after Running Crane’s panic attack.

Tribes take action

After the Blackfeet Council helped get Racine home, it quickly became clear that its work wasn’t done.

As McGee became more vocal on Facebook, more and more families reached out saying their loved ones were missing or stuck at treatment centers in Arizona. McGee continued to present her findings to the tribal government, and eventually, the council came out with a formalized plan of action.

Councilman Lyle Rutherford directed facilities on the reservation, including Journey to Recovery, not to send clients to treatment centers in Arizona. The tribe has worked with McGee and other advocates to bring at least 10 members home. And on Tuesday, the council issued a public health state of emergency “for Blackfeet tribal members affected by the humanitarian crisis arising from shuttered fraudulent behavioral health treatment facilities in Arizona.”

The council on Thursday instituted a ban prohibiting the solicitation of individuals on the reservation to attend fraudulent treatment facilities in Arizona and established civil penalties for individuals or entities that violate the ban at $5,000 for the first offense, $10,000 for the second offense and permanent expulsion from the reservation on the third offense.

The council also pledged to continue to help members who were displaced and said it created a task force to identify displaced individuals.

Councilwoman Shelly Hall said the emergency declaration helps bring awareness to the crisis and could allow the tribe to allocate more money toward its resolution.

“I believe there are about eight or 10 more Blackfeet down there,” Hall said. “This is important because these are our members. If they’re in any kind of trouble, we want to help them. We’ve heard horror stories of people who are on the streets in this heat.”

McGee said she also urged Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office to issue a public service announcement on the matter but was told that his office needed more information on the subject. She also reached out to members of Montana’s congressional delegation, and Sen. Jon Tester sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, urging the group to “immediately investigate this matter further and provide a detailed report of their findings.”

The Billings Area Indian Health Service has asked Montana tribes to let the agency know how many citizens have been impacted, and other tribes in Montana have also taken action.

Josie Fisher, Northern Cheyenne, was at a different treatment facility in Arizona and didn’t feel safe. She said a staff member made inappropriate sexual comments to her, and she wrote on Facebook that she wanted to leave.

Fisher got connected with advocates through Facebook, and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe paid for her plane ticket home.

“I’m so thankful to be home,” she said. “I’m at peace now. When I was there, I was just in survival mode.”

Northern Cheyenne Councilwoman Melissa Lonebear said as of Aug. 1, the tribe had helped three members get home from Arizona and added that the council is working with the tribal health department to develop a plan to get more people home.

She said part of the issue is that there is no treatment center on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

“The way the system is set up is if someone hits rock bottom and they want treatment, they will do an assessment at the Northern Cheyenne Recovery Center and then get referred to an outpatient 10-day program,” she said. “After 10 days, there’s a chance a bed will open in Billings or Butte, but that person may have to just return home. And because we don’t have sober living homes here, people come back and return to the same environment.”

Lonebear is hopeful that the tribe will be able to help people return home from Arizona, but acknowledged the council will have to overcome significant barriers in doing so. To be eligible for AHCCCS, treatment centers had clients change their residency address to Arizona, so it’s hard for tribal councils in Montana to know how many of their members are there. And tribes have noted that even when someone returns home, it can take time to change their residency back to Montana and re-enroll them in Medicaid.

“I just posted on Facebook asking, ‘How many Cheyenne members do we have in Arizona?’” Lonebear said. “I’m getting names from families, and it’s hard. It’s hard to reach people because there’s no way to communicate if that person doesn’t have a phone. This is a lot bigger than we know.”

Fisher’s boyfriend was at the same facility in Arizona, but it wasn’t as easy for him to get home. Jacinto Brien is Crow, and he tried reaching out to his tribe, just as Fisher had. But he had no luck.

“I tried reaching my tribe on the phone, but I couldn’t get ahold of anyone,” he said. “And because I’m Crow, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe couldn’t help.”

Reva Stewart, of the #StolenPeopleStolenBenefits campaign, ultimately fundraised to help get Brien home. Her GoFundMe has raised more than $8,000 to help Native Americans caught in the scam.

“I’m really grateful,” Brien said of Stewart’s efforts. “I’d just say, for any tribe that’s willing to help, please answer your phones. People need your help. This is important.”

Resources

If you or a loved one is at an Arizona treatment center or was at an Arizona treatment center and wants to come home, here are some resources:

• Call your tribe. See if they can help bring you or a loved one home.
• The Billings Area Indian Health Service is asking each tribe to let the agency know how many members have been impacted. Send relevant information to Jennifer.Lamere@ihs.gov and Steven.Williamson2@ihs.gov or call 406-247-7248.
• For an updated list on which Arizona treatment centers have been suspended, visit azahcccs.gov/Fraud/Providers/actions.html.
• To either verify or report an existing treatment center, visit verifyandreport.org.
• If you suspect Medicaid fraud or a health violation, call the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services’ fraud hotline at 800-201-6308.
• If you would like to file a report to add to the ongoing FBI investigation into Arizona treatment centers, visit forms.fbi.gov/phoenixgrouphomes.
• Advocates Reva Stewart and Laura McGee can be reached on Facebook.

This article was first published in the Missoulian. 

The post Sober living fraud scheme targeted Montana tribal citizens appeared first on Buffalo’s Fire.

The Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, the state’s only public adult psychiatric facility, is continuing to see high staff vacancies, budget deficits, and shortfalls in health and safety standards more than a year after losing federal accreditation following investigations into patient deaths and injuries.

In a virtual public meeting Tuesday with the hospital’s governing board — composed of top administrators from the Department of Public Health and Human Services and the Warm Springs facility — staff and consultants delivered presentations about safety trends and plans for improvement while touting encouraging changes at the state-run facility. 

The state health department has said that the oversight from the recently created governing board and focus on improving conditions at the facility is part of the Gianforte administration’s commitment to regaining the hospital’s federal certification from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. One of the consultants hired by the state to help oversee hospital operations described that effort in a written report on Tuesday as a multi-year “rigorous journey,” an assessment echoed by members of the group during the hour-long meeting.

The hospital is currently operating at roughly 80% capacity, with about 216 patients residing there, including the geriatric-psychiatry Spratt unit and a forensic wing for evaluating and treating criminal defendants. The hospital’s forensic unit was the only part of the facility with a wait-list. It is licensed for 54 beds, but has operated at a consistently lower census since last year. As of June, it was occupied by 46 people with 70 people across the state waiting for admission that month.

There have been 159 patient falls — one of the key indicators of patient safety that federal investigators flagged in 2022 — recorded across all parts of the facility so far this year. The highest frequency of falls — an average monthly rate of 12.1 per 1,000 patient days — has occurred in the Spratt unit. Staff told the governing board on Tuesday that falls are being tracked and reported more accurately across the facility and are down on the geriatric unit by roughly 25% compared to last year. 

The hospital also reported failing to meet its goal of zero chemical restraints used on patients in the main hospital and geriatric wing. Chemical restraints — defined by the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare as “any drug used for discipline or convenience and not required to treat medical symptoms” — were most commonly employed in the main hospital, where the intervention was reported at an average rate of 8.85 instances per 1,000 patient days in 2023. The practice was less common in the Spratt unit, while the hospital’s forensic unit reported zero instances of chemical restraint this year.

A 2022 clinical resource document created by the American Psychiatric Association said that using medication to treat a patient’s agitation should be voluntary and that medication should “never [be] used as a ‘chemical restraint,’” but noted that the term is poorly defined and misunderstood. Involuntary medications, the publication says, “should be used as a last resort for situations that present as acutely dangerous.”

A spokesperson for the health department did not respond before deadline to questions about how the hospital defines “chemical restraints” and what counts as an “occurrence.” 

Bernie Franks-Ongoy, director of the federally designated oversight group Disability Rights Montana, said Thursday that while eliminating the use of chemical restraints entirely should be a priority, defining and documenting the misuse of medication is often complicated.

“It is difficult to know exactly what the numbers represent without knowing precisely how the term ‘chemical restraint’ is defined under current hospital policies and what the reporting requirements are,” Franks-Ongoy said. “It would be good to know, for example, how many occurrences of chemical restraint were the result of genuine patient safety concerns and how many were based on staff convenience.”

The rate of patient seclusion also exceeded goals in different parts of the facility, sometimes significantly. In the main hospital, hours spent in seclusion per 1,000 patient hours ranged from 16.68 in January to 1.81 in May, far exceeding the goal rate of less than .36 hours.

In the forensic unit, rates of seclusion also varied widely, recorded at .05 hours per 1,000 patient hours in March to 24.73 hours in May. In the Spratt unit, rates of recorded seclusion were much less common and consistently below the hospital’s goal.

The hospital’s quality improvement metrics did not include how many of its patients have died this year. A health department spokesperson did not respond to multiple questions from Montana Free Press about patient deaths before deadline. 

Safety issues resulting in serious injuries continue to occur, officials said Tuesday, with a total of 10 recorded between the main hospital and the Spratt unit so far this year, compared to 14 in the prior year. 

One patient recently ingested a “toxic cleaning agent” brought into the facility by a contractor, interim hospital administrator David Culberson said. The patient was transferred to another facility for a higher level of care and later returned to the psychiatric hospital. That patient has since been discharged, Culberson said, and the hospital has implemented five new safety protocols to more closely monitor contractors entering the facility in the future.

The hospital reported a 37% employee vacancy rate in June, down from 45% last summer. After a hiring surge in January, February and March of this year resulting in a net gain of 39 employees, the hospital reported losing nine staff members in May and June. 

The highest vacancy rates are among registered nurses, with an 82% vacancy rate, and clinical therapists, whose vacancy rate was 72%, according to the hospital’s latest finance and human resources report. 

With high rates of contract staff and traveling professionals continuing to work at the facility, the hospital’s director of nursing, Jocelyn Peterson, told the governing board that Warm Springs is working to extend the length of traveler contracts to 26 weeks instead of 13 weeks to increase training opportunities for short-term workers.

“This way we can give them a couple more weeks of actual training and speak to some of those areas of safety, and things to look for, and kind of give them a better idea of what the facility is like and how important it is to treat our patients and make sure that they’re safe,” Peterson said. 

Culberson also told the board that the hospital is working hard to respond to the passage of House Bill 29, which will restrict the admission of patients with a primary diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, dementia or traumatic brain injury to the Montana State Hospital beginning in 2025.

“That’s a good portion of the folks in [the] Spratt [unit] right now. And we will not only have to turn down admissions, but we will have to discharge everybody with those three diagnoses,” Culberson said. “So it’s a big project we’ve started here with the help of [contractor Alvarez & Marsal] and then the care team in Spratt.”

As of June, the hospital reported overspending its annual budget significantly, with about $93 million in expenses versus its stated budget of $48.9 million, a trend that has continued from 2022. Of the listed expenses, the finance report said roughly $3.9 million was spent on the cost of traveling staff in June, a figure that has fluctuated month-to-month.

The hospital was given nearly $16 million in additional funds by the 2023 Legislature to make facility repairs and upgrades to help regain federal certification. 

Out of that total budget for capital projects, the hospital’s Tuesday report outlined specific uses for $5.9 million, including repairing the HVAC system, replacing fire doors, and other safety and medical upgrades. The report said the remaining $10 million in legislative appropriations will be set aside as “contingency for unanticipated repair projects impacting recertification.”

The group did not receive any public testimony during the designated public comment period. It is slated to meet again in the fall.

The post Montana State Hospital tallies high rates of falls, chemical restraints and staff vacancies appeared first on Montana Free Press.

After years of work, the Flathead Basin Commission released a map this spring identifying the highest potential risks from septic systems in the Flathead Basin. Many populated areas near bodies of water like Flathead Lake and Lake Mary Ronan were identified as “very high-risk,” meaning there is potential for septic systems to leak into the groundwater and, eventually, the surface water.

The commission had hoped the map would be a tool for planners and policymakers. Nutrient pollution is a leading cause of water impairment in the state, according to the Montana Environmental Information Center, and nutrients often get into the water via “nonpoint sources,” such as leaking septic systems or agricultural runoff, that accumulate into larger problems.

The FBC – initially formed by the Legislature in 1983 to help keep clean the water in the Flathead Basin – devoted a lot of attention to nonpoint source pollution.

Now, as part of Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Red Tape Relief initiative, the FBC is no more, combined instead with the Upper Colombia Conservation Commission, or UC3. The Western Montana Conservation Commission will replace the two groups that were dedicated to different problems in different watersheds. WMCC will extend its focus to six watersheds in western Montana.

In the Upper Columbia River Basin’s case, the former commission there accomplished its main objective, ridding the state of invasive mussels. But in the Flathead Basin, some are worried its needs are going to lose priority when combined with a larger area. 

For that reason, Jim Elser was not in favor of combining the commissions. 

In the Flathead Basin, the main focuses were curtailing nutrient pollution and aquatic invasive species, said Elser, the director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station. 

Since Flathead Lake bolsters the state economy – homes on the lake adding $12 to $17 million in property taxes, according to a 2021 study – it’s a very “lake-focused” basin, Elser said. One reason he agreed to be on the new commission was to make sure he has an “opportunity to call attention to the Flathead and its challenges and importance.”

Flathead Lake is known for its pristine water quality. Kate Sheridan, executive director of the water quality advocacy group the Flathead Lakers, said the biggest threat to the lake, other than something like an oil spill from the railway, is contamination from septic systems. Sheridan said headway was being made on that problem, and progress is going to need to continue as people keep moving to northwest Montana.

“We just don’t want to lose focus on the Flathead because we feel that this area is incredibly valued both ecologically and economically to Montana,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan said the new commission bringing on more watersheds brings their individual needs and concerns. She brought up the Clark Fork River Basin – a designated Superfund site included in the WMCC’s purview – and how that compares to Flathead Lake, which doesn’t have such considerable issues. She said she hopes the focus on Flathead Lake won’t diminish, although she’s optimistic about the way the new commission is taking shape. 

Aquatic invasive species, like zebra, quagga and dreissenid mussels, were the main focus of the former UC3. Such invasive species were anticipated to have a negative economic impact on Montana – one study estimated a loss of $230 million – if they took hold in the state’s rivers and lakes. 

After the first identification of dreissenid mussels in the Tiber Reservoir in 2016 – about 50 miles east of Shelby – there has been no physical evidence of mussels in Montana since 2017, said Phil Matson, head of the water quality and invasive species program at the Flathead Lake Biological Station and former UC3 member. 

Every year boats pass through inspection stations across the state with living or dead mussels attached, Matson said, but there’s been no evidence of the invasive species in water samples.

But Matson, who has been nominated by the UC3 to serve on the new WMCC, said boat inspection records show that mussels could be coming back in full force.

“The problem’s not over,” Matson said. “These boats are coming from all over the place, and those are the main threats.”

Despite the success curbing invasive species in the state, during the last meeting of the UC3, one identified downside of the commission was that it covered too big of an area and that its resources were spread too thin. 

Mark Bostrom, administrator of the Conservation and Resource Development Division at the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said the biggest hurdle now is trying to figure out how to handle an even bigger area with many issues that continue to demand attention.

“That’s the challenge, trying to do a consolidation on a bigger area and not grow government,” Bostrom said.

Bostrom, a former member of the FBC, said he’s excited about the new WMCC. Working with a former colleague on the UC3, they often asked each other, “Why do we even have these two commissions?”

Mike Koopal was one of the researchers who developed the septic risk map and is a former FBC member.

Koopal said the map overlays physical risk — things like how nutrients from septic systems can move through the soil and how far the residue from septic systems is to ground and surface water — with septic permit data from Flathead County, which included the age of each system. 

What the map shows is that there are more than 30,000 septic systems in Flathead County and roughly a third of them are older than 30 years, Koopal said. The average lifespan for an appropriately functioning septic system is 25 to 30 years. 

“It’s an issue that’s only going to grow in scope and size,” Koopal said. “We will have more septic on the landscape as more and more people move to Montana. And at the same time, the existing septics on the landscape are aging.”

Koopal said the new commission has a great opportunity to expand the map.

From an administrative perspective, Casey Lewis said combining the two commissions simplifies many things — projects, budgets and all the overlap in between. Lewis will be the new executive director for WMCC, a position she previously held at both the UC3 and the FBC.

Lewis is excited about the new commission and she sees a possibility to take the FBC’s mission and expand it west of the Continental Divide. She said the WMCC won’t lose track of issues in the Flathead.

“I anticipate septic systems and septic leachate to be a topic we continue to work on, and, ideally, we will expand the septic risk map to all of western Montana,” Lewis said in an email.

The post Will the reduction of red tape put conservation success at risk? appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Keane had lived on the plains 16 miles north of Loma, Montana, for 14 years. He married into the farm and he and his wife grew wheat, canola, flax and hemp. They kept chickens, but not cows. To the best of Keane’s knowledge, the closest grizzlies lived some 150 miles west in Glacier National Park — certainly not in the wide-open ranchland of north-central Montana. He reasoned that the bear followed the Marias River, which flows east from Glacier County, near the Blackfeet Reservation, and runs along the edge of the Keane farm. “I guess he happened to smell the chickens and came up out of the river bottom,” Keane said.

At the time, Keane’s grizzly sighting was the easternmost in the United States in more than a century. He had heard murmurings around town that the bears were moving closer, “but you just don’t expect one to be in your backyard,” he told me. As the grizzly pulverized his poultry, Keane dialed up the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to report the animal. But before the officer could make it out to his farm to apprehend the grizzly, a neighbor drove by in a loud pickup. The bear took off, and Keane was left to assess the carnage.

When the state’s grizzly bear management specialist for the region investigated the scene, he surmised that the bear was a 3-year-old male that had been moving toward the area, traveling about 10 miles every day. The official set a trap next to Keane’s coop, but the bear was never caught.

After the encounter, the state official installed an electric fence around his coop to protect the ruffled survivors. Keane started carrying a pistol with him on his tractor. “I catch myself looking over my shoulder now,” he said. “It makes you think twice about what else is out there.” After the incident made the local news, Keane was criticized by others around town. “One guy said we should have known better to keep chickens, being in bear country and all. Well, we aren’t in bear country. But maybe we’re starting to be now.”

“I catch myself looking over my shoulder now. It makes you think twice about what else is out there.”

TODAY, KEANE’S RUN-IN would not be newsworthy. Just a year after his sighting, another grizzly was photographed in the Big Snowy Mountains, about 100 miles southeast of the Keane farm. In the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, bears that have been isolated from one another for more than 100 years are venturing out of their respective regions, slowly reclaiming old territory.

The grizzly bear, despite what most people think, isn’t a species unto itself. Rather, it’s one of two living subspecies of brown bear found in North America, the other being the Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) in Alaska. Grizzlies (Ursus arctos horribilis) once ranged as far south as central Mexico, where they were known as oso plateado, silvery bears, for their grayish fur. An estimated 50,000 grizzly bears lived in the contiguous United States when the Lewis and Clark Expedition passed through in the early 1800s. But European settlers trapped and shot these bears until fewer than 1,000 remained. The southern edge of the grizzly’s range eventually contracted from Mexico to the southern border of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Grizzlies also disappeared from the Pacific Coast. In California in the mid-1800s, the bears were still so common that a $10 bounty was placed on their heads. Restaurants fried up greasy grizzly steaks and served them for less than a dollar. But by 1922, there were only 37 grizzly populations left in the contiguous U.S., and 31 would vanish within just 50 years. Survivors sought refuge in the remote forests of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington.

The grizzly’s gains in recent decades are the result of swift human intervention followed by natural expansion. In 1975, all grizzlies living in the Lower 48 of the United States were protected under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later designated six ecosystems as the focus of recovery efforts: Greater Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak, Bitterroot, Selkirk and the North Cascades.

Through taxes and donations, Americans spent millions of dollars to restore grizzlies — financing recovery planning, private land easements, and educational programs designed to teach people how to live with an animal capable of eating them. Critically, they also funded the relocation of bears. In the 1990s, scientists augmented the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly population in northwestern Montana by transplanting a handful of Canadian bears into the ecosystem. The descendants of those bears are now wandering into the Bitterroot Range, near the Montana-Idaho border, which has been devoid of grizzlies for decades. Biologists had initially planned to move some Canadian bears into the Bitteroots, too. Now they think the grizzlies may repopulate the ecosystem without their help.

Today, grizzlies number just below 2,000 in the Lower 48. Their population has more than doubled in half a century, and, as evidenced by Keane’s encounter, the bears are no longer content to roam within the boundaries we’ve contrived for them. Yellowstone’s grizzlies have tripled their range in recent decades and are now moving north out of the national park. Meanwhile, grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide recovery zone are heading south. The populations are now only about 50 miles apart, the closest they’ve been in more than a century. Scientists expect that the bears will join up in less than a decade — two islands becoming a continent.

The return of the grizzly bear from near-extinction is one of America’s unlikeliest comeback stories. The bears are among the slowest-reproducing mammals in North America; they require vast tracts of habitat (an adult male grizzly can have a home range of 600 square miles); and they kill people. Bringing back the grizzly required humans to overcome their fear of predators and champion the return of a known man-eater.

And the grizzly remains a fearsome animal. The bear is 800 pounds of muscle and fat, with sharp canines and 4-inch-long claws. It’s extremely defensive, always ready to neutralize a perceived threat. A human being is little more than a rag doll in its immense jaws. Though humans have protected the grizzly from extinction, public sentiment toward the subspecies remains divided: Only the wolf inspires more hatred and mistrust. And as grizzlies expand into places they haven’t inhabited in more than a century, they are crossing not only geographical and political boundaries but thresholds of tolerance.

By 1922, there were only 37 grizzly populations left in the contiguous U.S., and 31 would vanish within just 50 years.

I ENCOUNTERED MY FIRST Yellowstone grizzly outside a resort hotel near Jackson, Wyoming, in 2015. Next to the stone facade, a portly man wearing a furry brown onesie was waving at passing cars. The bear costume’s head was perched above his own, and two fangs protruded over his mustachioed face, almost as if the man had been partially consumed by the bear and was now helplessly peering out of its open mouth. In front of his chest, clasped between wooden claws, he held a placard that read: “I’m Worth More Alive Than Dead.”

I approached the bear, notebook in hand.

“I got this costume just for this event,” the man beamed, performing a small twirl. “Grizzlies are my absolute favorite species! I always feel more alive when I’m in grizzly habitat.”

Extending a paw, he introduced himself as Jim Laybourn, and said he had shown up on behalf of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, a nonprofit dedicated to conservation in the state. Inside the hotel, dozens of federal, state and tribal representatives were gathering to discuss the possible removal of federal protections from the Yellowstone grizzly population. If the states — Wyoming, Montana and Idaho — regained management authority, they were likely to legalize a trophy hunt.

The debate over Endangered Species Act protections for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears has dragged on for more than a decade. In 2007, when the population numbered more than five hundred, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared it recovered and removed protections. But environmental groups disputed the government’s assessment and took the agency to court, where a judge ruled that Fish and Wildlife had failed to adequately analyze the impact of climate change on whitebark pine, a key food source for Yellowstone’s grizzlies. Average temperatures in the region had increased by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, and the greatest warming was occurring at elevations above 5,000 feet, where whitebark pine grows. (In 2022, the tree was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.)

Federal scientists launched their own investigation into the grizzly’s food sources. They agreed that whitebark’s precipitous decline had caused bears to forage at lower elevations, making run-ins with humans more likely. And reduced cub survival rates, which had begun to slow grizzly population growth in 2002, coincided with the whitebark decline. However, the scientists also found that Yellowstone grizzlies relied more on meat than other populations, and that many bears already lived in areas without much whitebark pine. They proposed that cubs and yearlings were dying not from a lack of whitebark pine but because too many grizzlies were crowded into too limited an area.

Federal officials had again recommended the removal of Endangered Species Act protections for the Yellowstone grizzly population. Laybourn, a lifelong Wyoming resident, declared that despite his costume, he was not a “bear-hugger.” He was most concerned about the economic ramifications of a trophy hunt. “Our tourism economy here is based on bears. I work as a guide myself, and I’ve taken hundreds of people to see grizzly bears,” he said. Scientists funneled past us into the building, carrying hefty manila folders. Laybourn held the door open with his toothpick claws, an inadvertent ursine bellhop. “I want to make sure we have a robust population,” he continued. “Whenever we take people out to see the wildlife and geysers, every single person asks me, ‘Are we going to see a bear today?’”

FROM THE THREE BEAR LODGE to the Beartooth Barbeque to the Running Bear Pancake House, businesses near Yellowstone rely heavily on the ursine theme. “Grizzly X-ing” mugs are well stocked at every souvenir stand. And bear claws — a sweet Danish pastry — are sold in almost every bakery within a 100-mile radius of the national park. But there are still those who long for an actual bear claw.

At his office in eastern Oregon, I met Steve West, the host of the TV show Steve’s Outdoor Adventures. West was huge in both height and girth — the kind of man who might stand a tiny chance against a grizzly in a fight. A trimmed sandy beard created the mirage of a jawline on his round face. On the day I met him, he wore a plaid shirt that pulled tightly across his chest and a camouflaged ball cap with his TV show’s logo on it. West explained that he had started out hunting for meat — deer and elk, mainly — and made his first foray into trophy hunting in the 1990s with black bears and grizzlies in Alaska. Part of what had made bears so attractive was the risk. “Grizzlies are hunted because they’re a challenge,” he said.

West was a connoisseur of charismatic megafauna, and had bumped off beasts around the world. Oryx in Namibia. Water buffalo in Australia. Musk ox in Canada. Exotic glass-eyed trophies decorated the wood-paneled walls of his office.

“Stalking a grizzly bear is completely different than going after anything else,” West observed as we moved through the halls. “There’s the man-versus-bear thing that comes into play. Yeah, I’ve got a rifle or a bow, I’m holding an advantage of weaponry, but there’s still an element of danger.”

West told me he supported a mix of management approaches to brown bears. He thought there should be places off-limits to hunters, like Brooks Falls in Alaska, where thousands of tourists can watch brown bears fish for salmon from wooden viewing platforms. At the same time, bear hunting is permitted in other parts of the state. “Alaska is the perfect compromise,” he said. I asked West whether he would hunt in the Yellowstone ecosystem given the chance. Without a pause, he replied:

“I’ll buy the first tag.” 

“Grizzlies are hunted because they’re a challenge.”

IN 2017, following years of highly contentious meetings, the Yellowstone grizzly population lost federal protections for a second time. Then-Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called the delisting “one of America’s great conservation successes, the culmination of decades of hard work.” Less than a year later, Wyoming and Idaho announced trophy hunts. The two states held lotteries for a total of 23 tags, each of which would enable the winner to bag a bear. 

More than 8,000 people entered the lotteries, each paying a fee of less than $20. A few hunters gleefully anticipated killing the region’s best-known bear, Grizzly 399, who was often photographed ambling along park roads with two or three cubs in tow. World-renowned wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen entered the lottery, hoping to spare a bear’s life by winning a tag and then shooting with his camera instead of a gun. Miraculously, Mangelsen won a tag; Steve West did not.

Following the announcement of the grizzly’s second delisting, environmental groups and the Northern Cheyenne tribe sued the government, challenging the decision to remove protections from the isolated Yellowstone grizzly population rather than prioritize reconnecting populations across the West. Another lawsuit, filed by the Crow, Crow Creek Sioux and Standing Rock Sioux tribes and the Piikani Nation alongside other tribal leaders and societies, alleged that the federal government ignored legal requirements to consult with tribes about the decision. Since 2016, more than 100 Indigenous nations have signed the Grizzly Treaty, committing them to the restoration and revitalization of grizzly bear populations throughout North America.

“Our people have been separated from the grizzly since we were forced onto reservations, but we have not forgotten,” then-Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Chairman Brandon Sazue wrote to me. “In our genesis, it was the great grizzly that taught the people the ability for healing and curing practices, so the grizzly is perceived as the first ‘medicine person.’ … It is no coincidence that the spiritual reawakening of Native people on this continent has coincided with the modest recovery of the grizzly since the 1970s — a recovery that will end with delisting and trophy hunting in a return to the frontier mentality of the 1870s.”

Just before the trophy hunt was scheduled to begin, the judge presiding over the environmental groups’ lawsuit brought down the gavel. He ruled that the federal agency had exceeded its legal authority when it removed protections from the Yellowstone grizzly. The judge wrote in his decision that it would be “simplistic at best and disingenuous at worst” to not take into account the five other populations of grizzlies outside of Yellowstone. With the bears so close to closing the gap, losing protections would be an enormous setback for the subspecies. If the Fish and Wildlife Service was going to succeed in delisting the iconic bears, it would need to rejoin these island populations, creating genetic linkages that would ensure long-term survival. The trophy hunt was canceled, and protections were restored.

The ruling was a victory for the environmental groups and tribes who had fought hard to keep the animal protected indefinitely. For others living in close proximity to America’s growing grizzly population, it was anything but.

“Our people have been separated from the grizzly since we were forced onto reservations, but we have not forgotten.”

BLACK BART is the only bear Trina Jo Bradley doesn’t mind having around. The enormous jet-black grizzly, pushing 900 pounds, has lived on her ranch on Birch Creek for close to six years. He’s well-behaved, Bradley said, and keeps his brethren out: “Normally, we get bears coming through here pretty thick in March, heading out from the mountains down to the prairie. Since he’s been here, we’ve seen way fewer bears.”

Ranching is in Bradley’s blood. She was raised on a cattle operation some 16 miles south, near Dupuyer Creek in Montana. Her father was a hired rancher, which meant that Bradley and her brothers were put to work at a young age. They rode horses and herded cows. Any free time was spent mucking around outside — but always within shouting distance of the house, and with a guard dog. There were bears near Dupuyer, she said, even back then, in the 1980s and 1990s. Glacier National Park wasn’t too far away, and occasionally a grizzly from the Northern Continental Divide population would wander out and kill one of their cows.

Bradley went south to Casper, Wyoming, for college, where she studied agribusiness. At 22, a car accident forced her to return home to Montana, where, while recuperating, she met her husband. Instead of going back to school like she’d planned, she moved onto his family ranch, where she’s raised three daughters along with Angus cattle and quarter horses. When her father-in-law bought the Birch Creek land back in 1956, there were very few grizzlies in the area, she said. The first livestock loss happened in the 1990s when a bear killed a calf. Authorities promptly trapped and removed it. “That was the last bear they saw until I moved here. I’m pretty sure the bears followed me from Dupuyer,” she said.

As Montana’s bears grow in numbers and expand their range, they are spending more time on private land, leading to more encounters with humans and domestic animals. In 2019, for example, the state made more payments —$261,000 — to ranchers for livestock killed by predators than in any previous year, with nearly twice as many animals suspected to have been killed by grizzlies than wolves. In 2021, when ranchers reported 78 kills by wolves and 119 by grizzlies, payouts topped $340,000.

As Montana’s bears grow in numbers and expand their range, they are spending more time on private land, leading to more encounters with humans and domestic animals.

Bradley’s sage-green farmhouse is surrounded by some 3,500 acres of hayfield and private pasture, where she and her husband run about 250 cows. The house’s living-room window looks out over rolling hayfields, toward the snowcapped perimeter of the Rocky Mountains. From this vantage point, Bradley often watches the bears go by. “Grizzly bears are super cool, and I love seeing them,” she said. “But I don’t love seeing them in my yard or in my cows.”

Though grizzlies are around nearly every month of the year, her ranch hasn’t lost many of its domesticated animals to bears. Perhaps she has Black Bart to thank, or perhaps, she said, “our cows are just mean.” A neighbor less than a mile away, she said, loses between 15 and 20 calves to bears annually.

A few years ago, Bradley was appointed to Montana’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council, a state-run initiative with the aim of “listening to Montanans” and “following their interests while also conserving bears.” She was passionate about protecting agriculture, and wanted to ensure that farmers and ranchers got the assistance they needed to cope with the grizzlies in their midst. “Pretty much everybody here is just tired. We’re tired of grizzly bears. We’re tired of conflicts. We’re tired of not letting our kids play outside. We’re tired of having to sacrifice our paychecks for the public’s wildlife.” This was one of the most common arguments I heard from livestock producers: Liberal urbanites want predators back on the landscape, but they aren’t suffering the consequences of a grizzly in the backyard. “It’s not like camping or backpacking,” Bradley said. “We don’t have a choice. We have to go outside. We have to take care of our cows. And there’s probably going to be a bear there.”

As long as grizzlies remain under the wing of the Endangered Species Act, state wildlife managers are unable to relocate or euthanize bears that kill livestock without first consulting the federal government. Ranchers believe this limits their ability to get rid of the bears causing problems. (Environmental groups and scientists have long questioned whether grizzlies are responsible for as many livestock deaths as states allege.) State and federal officials have discussed removing protections from the Northern Continental Divide bears, but perhaps chastened by the Yellowstone debacle, the Fish and Wildlife Service recommended in 2021 that all grizzlies in the Lower 48 remain listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

“Grizzly bears are super cool, and I love seeing them. But I don’t love seeing them in my yard or in my cows.”

Bradley disagreed with this assessment. “Grizzly bears no longer need to be protected. They’re not unicorns,” she said.

“How many bears do you think is enough, in an ideal world?” I asked.

“I think when the grizzly bears were put on the Endangered Species Act — there were only like (300 to) 400 bears in the entire state then — that was enough.”

Many ranchers want tougher punishments for encroaching bears. They want them removed from the population right away, not given multiple chances to redeem themselves after attacking livestock. They want more funding for conflict prevention measures. (In 2021 and 2022, Fish and Wildlife provided a total of $40,000 for grizzly-deterrent fencing, with the state chipping in $5,000.) Bradley had set up an electric fence around the chickens and goats in the yard, but it wasn’t feasible to put an electric fence around the entire ranch. For now, she’d have to rely on Black Bart to scare off the others.

“He’s the best guard bear there is.”

CHRIS SERVHEEN first laid eyes on a grizzly in the Scapegoat Wilderness, near Helena, Montana. He was in his early 20s, backpacking with college friends, when they entered a meadow and caught sight of a bear tearing up a huge stump, looking for insects. “We stayed there for a while, just watching him from the trees,” he said. “Grizzlies have this ability to burn into your memory so that you remember everything that was happening when you saw them. It’s really amazing how much you can remember, even years later. … That’s the magic of grizzly bears.”

Servheen is arguably the foremost grizzly expert in the United States, having served as the Fish and Wildlife Service national grizzly bear recovery coordinator for 35 years until his retirement in 2016. He was the guy in charge of making sure bears didn’t disappear from the Lower 48, and evidently, he did a decent job of it.

Servheen grew up on the East Coast, but, inspired by the National Geographic wildlife specials that captivated him as a child, he moved to Montana to study wildlife biology. He began by researching eagles under the mentorship of famed biologist and conservationist John Craighead. Servheen pivoted to grizzly bears for his Ph.D., three years after the subspecies landed on the endangered species list. After finishing his doctorate in 1981, he accepted the newly created position of grizzly bear recovery coordinator, but he wasn’t optimistic about the bear’s prospects: There were only about 30 breeding females left in the Yellowstone population. “It’s important to recognize we were really close to losing grizzly bears at that point,” he said.

For more than three decades, Servheen was a constant presence at bear meetings. Whether in Yellowstone, the North Cascades or the Cabinet-Yaak, his nearly bald head stood out among the Stetsons. In 2015, still working at the agency, he maintained that the Yellowstone population, and possibly even the Northern Continental Divide population, should be delisted. The grizzly group had met its ecological recovery goals, and, provided the population was managed carefully after delisting, the bears were guaranteed to be around for a long time.

“The objective of the Endangered Species Act is to get a species to the point where protection is no longer required,” Servheen told me at the time. “The purpose is to fix the problem.” In the case of the Yellowstone grizzly, he believed it had been.

During Servheen’s final years as the grizzly recovery coordinator, he began to worry that the federal government was bending to the will of the states rather than serving the grizzly’s best interests. As the agency prepared for the second delisting, Servheen had written some guidance on how best to manage grizzly deaths once the population lost protections, essentially putting safeguards in place that would stem any future population decline. If too many bears died, for example, these measures would ensure that the population regained protections. But his document came back with such safeguards removed. This, he felt, eroded the credibility of the recovery program and made delisting “biologically incredible and legally indefensible.” Knowing it would be up to him to defend such a plan in the face of a lawsuit — which was all but guaranteed — “I quit.”

“Grizzlies have this ability to burn into your memory so that you remember everything that was happening when you saw them. It’s really amazing how much you can remember, even years later. … That’s the magic of grizzly bears.”

It wasn’t the triumphant ending to his career that Servheen had imagined. “The grizzly bear recovery program is one of the most successful stories in the Endangered Species Act. They’re a challenging species to recover, and we did it,” he told me, “but all the political bullshit that happened right at the end kind of spoiled it.” Now, rather than spending his retirement fishing, Servheen had made it his mission to bring attention to the risks confronting grizzlies. I asked him if he thought grizzlies should still lose federal protections.

The answer was a decisive no. “For years, I was an advocate for delisting,” he said. He believed that the agency had gotten Yellowstone’s bears to the point where protections were no longer needed. And he hoped states would take on this responsibility with maturity and grace. But lately, “the actions of Montana’s Legislature have proven that the states are no longer able to be trusted when it comes to managing large carnivores.” Servheen pointed to a disconcerting trend in the West that he dubbed “anti-predator hysteria.” The Montana Legislature, for example, had approved a spring hound hunting season for the state’s black bears — a practice that had been banned in Montana for a century. Servheen perceived this as the state sliding backwards into a Manifest Destiny mindset. “It’s really horrifying to me to see this. If they weren’t still (federally) protected, one can only imagine what Montana would do to grizzlies.”

I asked Servheen how many grizzlies he thought the United States could feasibly handle. Some conservation advocates believed we could happily live with as many as 6,000, and lobbied for the bears to be returned to California, the Grand Canyon and the Southern Rockies. Then there were people like Trina Jo Bradley, who wanted far fewer bears than there were now. Most people weren’t willing to give a numerical answer, focusing instead on the genetic health and connectivity of the populations. However, Servheen — the scientist — was ready with an answer: 3,000 to 3,400 grizzlies, at least 1,000 more than estimated to now be living in the Lower 48.

The Yellowstone ecosystem and Northern Continental Divide, he explained, could support 2,000. The Bitterroot could hold 300 to 400. The Selkirks and Cabinet-Yaak could take another 150 bears. And the North Cascades could support up to 400 bears — though there were none present at the moment. But Servheen warned that, amid anti-predator sentiment, we could begin to see an overall population decline, not an increase. “Grizzly bears are special animals,” Servheen said. “They have low resilience. They live in special, remote places. And if we’re going to maintain grizzly bears, we have to behave and treat them in a special way.”

In February 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would again review whether to remove federal protections from the grizzly bears in both Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Continental Divide ecosystems. Whether or not grizzlies continue to grow their numbers in the Lower 48 — and, eventually, close the gaps that exist between populations — depends now on our behavior and our politics.

Excerpted from EIGHT BEARS: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future, available July 11 from W.W. Norton.

Author Gloria Dickie, a former High Country News intern, is a climate and environment correspondent for Reuters. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

Copyright © 2023 by Gloria Dickie. Used by permission of Gloria Dickie, care of The Strothman Agency LLC. All rights reserved.