Plum Creek Timber Co. has agreed to sell 117,152 acres around Placid Lake and the Gold Creek drainage northeast of Missoula to the Nature Conservancy for $85 million.

“They are among the most ecologically diverse and intact biological systems remaining in the United States,” Plum Creek spokeswoman Kate Tate said in a media release Monday afternoon.

The deal also includes 48,000 acres on both sides of Interstate 90 between Snoqualmie Pass and Ellensburg in western Washington, in the heart of the Cascade Range. Total cost of the sale is $134 million.

“This isn’t just Seeley Lake’s backyard,” said Nature Conservancy land manager Chris Bryant. “It’s Missoula’s backyard as well. It’s almost adjacent to the Rattlesnake Wilderness, and it touches some of the (Confederated Salish and Kootenai) Tribal Primitive Area by Jocko Lake. This landscape has cultural value for traditional resources, Native American uses, current hunting, and recreation. It’s a really important landscape for people, as well as wildlife. Now we’ve got to figure how to balance all that in a long-term ownership strategy.”

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The oldest living member of the Crow Tribe turned 101 years old Monday. Joe Medicine Crow, who was born Oct. 27, 1913, is the last remaining Crow war chief.

Medicine Crow is noted as a tribal historian, World War II veteran, anthropologist, author and 2009 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The nation's highest civil honor was bestowed upon Medicine Crow by President Obama.

"As a warrior and living legend, history flows through Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow High Bird," Obama said in a 2009 statement. "Joe Medicine Crow is a symbol of strength and survival, and the United States honors him for his dedication to this country and to all Native Americans."

Medicine Crow was the first of his tribe to earn a master's degree, according to his biography posted on the Custer Battlefield Museum website.

He earned "War Chief" status for his service in WWII, as well as earning a bronze star for meritorious service.

Today, he continues to lecture on the Battle of Little Bighorn at Montana colleges.

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A picture of two bison walking near the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is among those featured in a recent international photo contest.

The photograph (above) by Lukas Gawenda helped secure his award as Highly Commended Photographer of the Year 2014 by the Society of Biology, a British group focused on life sciences.

The group holds and annual amateur photography competition. The theme of this year's contest was "habitat and shelter."

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Lacey Middlestead is a Montana native and freelance writer currently living in Helena, Mont. She loves meeting new people and helping share their stories. When she’s not busy writing articles for newspapers like the Independent Record and Helena Vigilante, she can usually be found indulging in her second greatest passion–playing in the Montana wilderness. She loves skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and four wheeling, hiking, boating, and riding dirt bikes in the summer.

Nothing rattles you like the high-pitched whine of a chainsaw gnawing its way through a moonless night. Follow that with several shrill shrieks. Oh and add those sounds to an area right down the road from your house. If it wasn’t for the fact that Halloween is only a few days away, I would be extremely worried. Thankfully, I know that the horror movie sounds down the street are just emanating from one of the haunted houses in the Helena area.

The perhaps too close to home haunted house I just described is known as the Spring Meadow Resources Haunted Barn. Although I haven’t paid my annual visit to it yet, I have fond, hilarious and haunting memories of it from years past.

The first year I managed to convince several friends to accompany me to it. They split us into small groups of two or three when we arrived and assigned us a suspicious looking hooded figure to navigate us through the lurkings ahead. First, we wound our way along a narrow path through a graveyard with freshly dug graves. I found out the hard way that not all of the dearly departed were “resting” in peace quite yet. Once through the graveyard, we made our way into a dilapidated barn. We were met by strobe lights, cages rattling with creatures I closed my eyes too quickly to truly see, and a masked man wielding a running chainsaw (chain removed of course!). I think what scared me the most was daring to look back one point and seeing a freakish clown treading closely behind me toting a four foot long wrench.

That haunted house left my heart bouncing with palpitations….that was until a brief announcement was made after exiting the barn. My friend Tara, who was pregnant at the time, had gone through the barn in a group ahead of us and apparently had already honed in on her momma grizzly instincts. She took it a little too personally when people jumped out and tried to scare her. She threw a few protective punches and kicks which prompted the later announcement requesting that guests please not assault the actors. My group burst out laughing because we knew right away who must have provoked that announcement. But needless to say, I want Tara by my side if I ever wind up in a horror movie.

While I haven’t made it to the haunted barn this year yet, I did pay a visit to Helena’s newest attraction called The Cellar Dwellers. This haunted house is located downtown on Fuller Avenue and is akin to a circus freak show but with a terrifying twist. I arrived with a group of five other friends one Saturday evening and after purchasing our tickets, we waited out on the sidewalk anxiously for our turn.

Upon finally entering, we were brought into a small room where we met Zechariah and Zeb, a husband/wife duo who explained to us that they have a dangerous passion for collecting strange and unstable creatures from all over the world. In the middle of this speech, my friend Sarah and I turned around to see one of their creatures crouched in a corner. It was wearing a long hood and kept stretching out its long, clawed fingers. It reminded me of that creature from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village film. As the show continued, all hell eventually broke lose when that creepy critter behind us broke out of its cage and went running amuck. We were then forced to follow Zechariah as he tried to lead us to safety. He wound us through a maze of different cages filled with the other creatures him and Zeb had caught on their travels. Between the blood-curdling screeches and disturbingly realistic makeup, it was hard not to get wrapped up in the story line. Eventually, we made it out safe and sound. While the boys behind us laughed off the experience, Sarah and I walked hand-in-hand back to our vehicles. We decided to reward ourselves for surviving by paying a visit to Frozen Moose for some delectable frozen yogurt.

If you get bored with tricks and treats this Halloween and are in the Helena area, I highly suggest paying one of these haunted houses.

Kari Gunderson was sitting in her office when it started to rain golden larch needles.

Workplace phenomena like that are common when you’re a wilderness ranger. And Gunderson has spent 35 years reporting for duty in the Mission Mountains Wilderness. This fall, she’ll stop calling the Missions her office, but she’ll still call it home.

“This is very bittersweet for me,” Gunderson said, sitting on a boulder at the edge of Glacier Slough. “But it’s time to hand it on to others. I think there are a lot of Millennials who have the interest and skill-set to do this. I hope to pass it on to people with local knowledge and credibility – who know the land.”

Few know it as well as Gunderson. Sitting on the edge of Glacier Slough, she can name every peak, recall which of the wilderness’s 225 lakes hide behind them, identify the odd mounds in the distance as muskrat lodges, and still get a tingle watching the shower of fall color blow across the view.

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Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation. A Healing Arts Practitioner, she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Integrative Healthcare.  She says, " Health is resiliency, a zest for the journey. It’s about coming awake to the joy of being alive.  As a practitioner, its a privilege to facilitate that healing process, to help weave new patterns of health & well-being. “ And by the way, healthier, happier people help create a healthier, happier world.

I remember the fun of carving a pumpkin every year with my dad. Actually, each of us three girls would carve and he’d help us. Or, that’s what I think I remember.

As many photos as my dad took, he didn’t document the family pumpkins. Too bad.

In fact, the only surviving photo I have from childhood Halloween is myself in this truly tremendous squirrel costume my mom sewed. I loved squirrels. They were my California suburban wildlife. But my dad didn’t take that image -- the local newspaper did.

I haven’t carved a pumpkin for years so I still don’t have any images of them. My daughter and I might carve one this year just to try some of these tips from photographer Andre Costantini. I hope you find the same inspiration.

Tamron’s Andre Costantini reminds you that two challenges to getting any good picture (not just spooky shots in October) are getting the right shutter speed and a balanced exposure. You also need to make sure you’re using the right equipment to get the right shutter speed

Here’s a few other tips to capture the spirit of your “ultimate” jack-o’-lantern, 

1. Lenses with aperture settings of F/2.8 or wider have a larger opening to let more light in. Costantini finds this especially helpful when the light is low, such as when photographing a candlelit pumpkin in the chilly evening hours. Another helpful feature is Vibration Control. It compensates for any slight movements that you might make, helping you to achieve sharper hand-held images of your pumpkin props. (Use a tripod for long exposures and you’ll want to turn the VC off).
2. If your camera has a "Full Auto" mode, as soon as the light gets low, the camera’s going to add flash whether you want it or not. Turn your camera to the "A" or "AV” mode (“aperture priority” mode) and choose the aperture yourself. By choosing F/2.8 you'll get the fastest shutter speed available. 
3. Compose your shots carefully to give your pumpkin pal some context. Costantini suggests creatively setting up your jack-o’-lantern, perhaps placing him on the side of the frame, leaving plenty of room for the tree line and sky, which can make the jack-o’-lantern appear as if he’s popping into the frame with a boisterous “Boo!” In that case, a wide-angle lens helps incorporate the background into the images, creating a perfectly ominous environment from which the pumpkin can emerge.

Climate change trends in the Pacific Northwest already point to where snowpack levels, fish survival and wildfire frequency are headed.

But how snow, fish and wildfire might combine to affect lakeside picnicking is a work in progress. That’s why roughly 100 federal, state, tribal and private land managers packed into Missoula's Holiday Inn Parkside this week to write a climate-change vulnerability and adaptation plan.

“For a while, a lot of people thought there was too much uncertainty around climate change,” said David Peterson, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station in Seattle. “But we’re pretty sure about some things. With temperature, different models predict different magnitudes of increase, but they’re all predicting it will get warmer. For snowpack, we’ve got good evidence over the past 60 years that it’s declining and will continue to decline. Most of the West is arid – there’s going to be a lot of competition for that moisture.”

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