A subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee is recommending lifting federal protections for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park area.
    
The subcommittee made its conditional recommendation Thursday during a meeting in Bozeman. The recommendation was based on data from a nearly complete report on whitebark pine. Pine nuts are a key food source for grizzlies.
    
The recommendation is expected to be presented to the full committee next month in Missoula. The committee can then pass it on to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

MORE>>>KTVM

Winner of several film festival awards, this video explores the wolverine, one of nature's most elusive and mysterious mammals.

Flathead Police Reports

6:59 a.m. Runnaway horses were spotted on Sheepherder Hill.

7:30 a.m. A Pepsi dispenser was abused on Highway 35 in Bigfork.

8:08 a.m. More loose horses were seen on Columbia Falls Stage.

8:15 a.m. A Rabe Road man is concerned that stray dogs will get into his bear traps.

9:22 a.m. A barking dog was heard on Forest Drive.

9:33 a.m. Someone reported that a reckless woman in a gold Oldsmobile darted in front of a semi-truck and maneuvered through traffic to make it into a turn lane.

MORE>>>Flathead Beacon

The state is about 147,000 square miles, and encompasses vast mountains, sweeping valleys, placid lakes, and roiling rivers. The scenery is, in a word, spectacular.

The state is covered in gorgeous mountains. In fact, it's named for it: Montana comes from the Spanish word montaña, meaning mountain. Some of the mountain ranges, like the Bitterroot, Absaroka, and Beartooth ranges, are part of the Rockies.

9 MORE REASONS>>>Business Insider

Yellowstone National park is the largest super-volcano on the continent and possibly the world.

It's an underground boiling cauldron of lava, but just how likely is it to erupt or do scientists have other concerns?

"It's been 640,000 since the last eruption," says Jake Lowenstern, a scientist with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

The lava pool beneath Yellowstone National Park is more than twice as big as scientists previously believed, that's according to new research from the Geological Society of America.

Scientists from the University of Utah say the lake of molten lava is nearly 50 miles long and 12 miles wide.

Jake Lowenstern, a scientist with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, says even a small eruption could cause a minor disaster.

"It could cause damage to the rivers, some flooding, it's going to put some ash into the air and the ash could certainly get out to the communities out here."

The park is known for the lava lake that fuels all the hot springs.

Scientists don't think the super-volcano will erupt, but the real risk to the region comes from earthquakes.

MORE>>>KULR8

On fields where cattle graze and wheat grows, a group of conservationists and millionaire donors are stitching together their dreams of an American Serengeti. Acre by acre, they are trying to build a new kind of national park, buying up old ranches to create a grassland reserve where 10,000 bison roam and fences are few.

The privately financed project — now a decade in the making — has ambitions as big as the Montana sky, tapping private fortunes to preserve the country’s open landscapes. Supporters see it as the last, best way to create wide-open public spaces in an era of budget cuts, government shutdowns and bitter battles between land developers and conservationists.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said George E. Matelich, the chairman of the conservation group, American Prairie Reserve and a managing director of a New York private equity firm. “It’s a project for America.”

The trouble is many ranching families here in northern Montana say it is not a project for them. As the reserve buys out families and expands its holdings — it now has about 274,000 acres of private ranches and leased public lands — some here are digging in their heels and vowing not to let their ranches become part of the project.

MORE>>>New York Times

6:55 a.m. Someone saw four horses walking down Cemetery Road and found manure on the roundabout.
 
8:34 a.m. Dogs on Pleasant Valley Drive were barking.
 
11:52 a.m. A resident on Klondyke Loop reported that a small “taco dog” just ran through his yard. The animal warden advised the dog owner that his Chihuahua was loose again.
 
12:25 p.m. A Whitefish man believes that his kids broke into his safe and pawned his guns.
 
1:17 p.m. An Evergreen man suspects that his son’s “shady” friends stole his riding lawn mower.
 
1:27 p.m. A complaint was made about a big stray sheep dog on Manning Drive.
 
1:47 p.m. A Kings Way resident reported that their neighbor has too many dogs.
 
2:12 p.m. A man on Spring Creek Drive complained that the woman who borrowed his jacket stole his phone out of the pocket.

MORE>>>Flathead Beacon

Secreted in a towering Pryor Mountain cave, the Little People danced.

Keening a mournful chant, the knee-high, no-neck beings circled a fire that sprang from a glowing rock. At irregular intervals, an anguished wail in an ancient language crackled like lightning flashing from the ground to gathering clouds.

Deep in heart of the night, their drums faded and dancing stopped. From the cave soared a flight of great winged creatures.

Invisible against a starless night, they swooped low over the Children of the Large-Beaked Bird camped in buffalo-hide tepees near the banks of Pryor Creek. Their powerful wings loosed a howling wind through the sleeping village, rattling the lodge poles and unnerving ponies grazing nearby.

Together the creatures banked south and east, headed for the steep canyons that caged the Bighorn River. On sheer cliffs rising hundreds of feet above the river’s surface at Devil’s Canyon, the Little People painted new warnings.

It would be a grim message this wild October night. A terror of a new kind floated up the Missouri, felling the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan by the thousands. Wolves and foxes stalked boldly through empty villages rotting in winds and rain.

The terror preceded light-colored men up the Yellowstone and crept through its tributaries spreading through the Bighorn country and into the Pryor Mountains, moving faster even than trappers and traders.

MORE>>>Billings Gazette

Ever since he proposed limits on this city's long-standing tradition of public drinking, Sheriff Ed Lester has heard a barrage of insults. "Teetotaler" and "prohibitionist" were bad enough. But "do-gooder"?

In this 134-year-old, rough-and-tumble mining town, even the top lawman cherishes being a part of its rugged image. "It's just something I never envisioned myself to be," the sheriff sniffed.

Mr. Lester finds himself in the middle of a raucous debate in Butte, one of a few U.S. municipalities that allows drinking in public. His proposal is part of a municipal identity crisis, pitting the city's hopes of encouraging new investment against a desire to stay true to its roots as a blue-collar outpost that likes its whiskey straight and its government hands-off.

Earlier this year, after getting complaints about noise and vandalism in Butte's historic uptown area, the sheriff proposed a ban on public drinking between the hours of 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. The long-forsaken uptown with its cluster of remaining bars was the round-the-clock heart of Butte when it was a copper-mine boomtown a century ago. Today, as new residents and businesses have begun to move in, the late-night carousing out on the streets has gotten more notice.

MORE>>>Wall Street Journal

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