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In November, the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) received a hearing in a Senate committee, putting the bill on track for passage within the next year. As a member of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project (BCSP) steering committee, I helped develop the bill. I’m proud that the most recent polling shows that 75% of Montanans, across the political spectrum, support the bill. That’s because the steering committee carefully considered how the bill can best meet the needs of the Blackfoot’s fish and wildlife populations, and of th...
In celebration of 35 years of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder, each week we will run parts of articles that appeared in the issue 35 years ago and 20 years ago. The entire issue will be uploaded to our website seeleylake.com for you to enjoy. We hope you will enjoy the journey with us as we follow our community through the past 35 years as documented by the Pathfinder. 35 years ago: Dec. 18, 1986 issue Crowd packs new gym for first game Some people said it couldn't be done - build a school gymnasium...
SEELEY LAKE – The Dec. 5 Seeley Lake Historical Society and Museum's annual meeting combined a little bit of business with a large portion of pleasure as the assembled members watched two brief films with relevance to the Seeley Lake area. The business part included recognition of the society's new Lifetime Members, those who have donated $1,000 to the museum: Addrien Marx, Jack & Belinda Rich, Dave Anderson, Wally Mills, Warren and Laura Thieme, the Burgess family and the McLeod & Mulroney f...
SEELEY LAKE – At their Nov. 8 meeting, the Seeley Lake Community Council unanimously approved a letter to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks asking them to repair and reopen the Clearwater Junction RV Dump station for the 2022 season. They also hosted a Senior Symposium with representatives from various groups and received several updates from Seeley Lake District Ranger Quinn Carver. Per the discussion from their October meeting, Council Secretary Tom Browder and Council member Bruce Friede drafted a letter to FWP Director Henry Worsech r...
The long talked about Salmon Lake Highway Reconstruction project appears to finally be coming to fruition. Most of this highway stretch replaced the original wagon road into Seeley Lake country in the early 1920s. Early ways into the valley were from the east and the west. The earliest main transportation route to and through here was via the Jocko Trail used by aboriginal peoples for ages coming from today’s Mission Valley. That trail comes from Jocko Pass, down Placid Creek, over Hill16/Tuppers Lake vicinity to the Riverview area south of S...
WASHINGTON, DC – The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) received its first hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Oct. 19. This was following Montana Senator Jon Tester’s reintroduction of the bill in April. Montana Senator Steve Daines, member of the committee, testified that he would like to see more balance. He proposed that along with the nearly 80,000 acres of new Wilderness proposed in the BCSA, that there would be a corresponding release of Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) that are deemed not suitable Wil...
OVANDO - Ovando residents and local agencies hope to spread the word on bear safety in order to avoid incidents similar to the fatal grizzly bear attack that occurred in downtown Ovando in early July. Representatives from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) held an open house in Ovando Thursday, Aug. 5. There the representatives and residents had a public discussion on what communal and individual methods could be taken towards mitigating...
SEELEY LAKE – Into its sixth year of the Change Your Pace Challenge, the Seeley Lake Community Foundation raised over $80,800 for 14 local organizations, including over $23,000 for the CYP Match Fund. The match fund was up $9,000 up from last year and had the highest number of individual donors that the program has seen since it started in 2016 with 192 families giving. "Not only did we have one of the highest match percentages [$0.49 per dollar raised], more people are getting into this," Commu...
In celebration of 35 years of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder, each week we will run parts of articles that appeared in the issue 35 years ago and 20 years ago. The entire issue will be uploaded to our website seeleylake.com for you to enjoy. We hope you will enjoy the journey with us as we follow our community through the past 35 years as documented by the Pathfinder. 35 years ago: June 12, 1986 issue C.B. Rich - An Introduction (Editor's note: Diane Herron, graduating senior, delivered the followin...
Everyone in Montana uses our outdoors but not everyone has the same vision for how to manage it. Do we want forest restoration or recreation areas for snowmobiling? Sometimes what’s best for an angler isn’t what’s best for a backcountry skier or the timber industry or for environmental health. Every stakeholder has a unique vision on how to protect our public lands. That’s the beauty of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project. The BCSA was originally conceived in a 2005 agreement between snowmobilers and wildlife conservationists, two gro...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thursday, April 29 U.S. Senator Jon Tester reintroduced his landmark Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) in the Senate. With no change to the bill since it was reintroduced in 2019, many still support it while other recreationists are getting more vocal about the lack of collaboration that developed the current proposal. History of the BCSA The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project started more than 15 years ago from a collaborative effort of ranchers, logger, timber companies, outfitters, local citizens, b...
OVANDO - Staff members from Blackfoot Challenge shared their experiences and expertise with certain programs during a virtual event called Stories from the Field Wednesday, April 14. The first speaker was Cindy Super, the forestry and prescribed fire coordinator. She spoke about the importance of restoring fire as an ecological process as she described her team’s process of organizing a prescribed fire on private property in the Blackfoot last spring. “We will learn together as we bring fire back to its rightful place on our landscape,” she s...
Prescribed burn planned for Game Range on Bandy Ranch WOODWORTH – Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in coordination with the University of Montana is planning to conduct an 80-acre prescribed burn on the Bandy Ranch, on the east side of the Blackfoot/Clearwater Wildlife Management Area Game Range. The burn will be conducted in April when weather, fuel conditions and air quality become favorable. Smoke will be visible from Highway 200, Highway 83 and the Woodworth area. According to FWP Wildlife Biologist Scott Eggeman, the purpose of the project...
To the Decision Makers of the poisoning of the North Fork Blackfoot River in the Scapegoat Wilderness, Having been involved in a similar project in Arizona nine years ago with the Forest Service, Arizona Game & Fish (same as MT FWP), the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, USFWS, Bureau of Reclamation and others, I witnessed the effort to establish/maintain a native fish population in a Wilderness and a Wild & Scenic River using fish poisons Rotenone mixed with Potassium Permanganate. I produced a 39-minute video (available at https://youtu.be/QuVUKqEkQCM)...
Just after sunrise Saturday, Jan. 9, local wolf trapper Rob Henrekin fired up his snowmobile to check his trapline, something he has done every day since the wolf season opened Dec. 15. While he had seen tracks from a pair of wolves Dec. 24, he had not had a single visit to his 40+ foothold traps. "It is such a rush everyday, even when I don't catch a wolf," said Henrekin. "If I'm just patient and everything is working, they will be back. Whether I catch them or not is unknown but I'll have a...
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake Community Council listened to presentations from multiple community leaders during their virtual meeting Monday, Jan. 11. Speakers included Missoula District Administrator Bob Vosen who presented Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) projects expected to take place in the upcoming year; Claire Muller, Seeley Lake Community Foundation executive director, who presented the Foundation’s accomplishments in 2020 and their plans for 2021; and Seeley Lake District Ranger Quinn Carver who spoke about the U.S. Forest S...
WOODWORTH – Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in coordination with the University of Montana is planning to conduct an 80-acre prescribed burn on the Bandy Ranch, on the east side of the Blackfoot Clearwater Wildlife Management Area Game Range, this fall when weather, fuel conditions and air quality become favorable. Smoke will be visible from Highway 200 and the Woodworth area. The area will be closed to hunters and recreationists during burning operations. According to FWP Wildlife Biologist Scott Eggeman, the purpose of the project is for e...
SEELEY LAKE - As part of their Hill 16 trail system project, Seeley Lake Regional Outdoor Center for Kinetic Sports' (ROCKS) recently completed the Lake View Trail and began a yet to be named all-access trail. Both are located near Placid Lake State Park. The Lake View Trail is a "family friendly" trail designed for all types of non-motorized uses including hiking, bike riding and riding horses. The trailhead, for the roughly two mile trail, opens at the intersection of North and South Placid La...
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Montana Senator Jon Tester’s Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act was heard in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Wednesday, Sept. 16. The U.S. Forest Service spoke in support of the BCSA and shared concerns after representatives expressed that they would work together towards the act’s intended goals. The next phase will be a vote among all committee members that has not been scheduled yet. If passed, the BCSA will move on to the full Senate for a vote. Tester’s office said he is encouraged by the h...
Over fifteen years ago, folks from Seeley Lake and Ovando sat at the conference table at Pyramid Mountain Lumber with three goals: support local timber jobs and healthy forests, increase recreational use in the Lolo National Forest, and permanently conserve some of the wildest places in Montana. What resulted from that meeting and countless gatherings after it is the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project, which Senator Tester introduced as legislation in June 2019. We’ve held many public meetings and have honed the Blackfoot Clearwater S...
Horse packers and mountain bikers spend less time together than we should - it sometimes seems like we’re in the woods in search of different things. But the truth is that we’re all drawn to the backcountry for the same reasons: to enjoy Montana’s wild places, to connect with the natural world and to restore our spiritual health. We all value this landscape and deserve a place on it. It’s that understanding that has allowed us to come together as part of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project. Discussions weren’t always easy but we re...
SEELEY LAKE – This past August the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project released an economic report highlighting how public lands and water sustain the economy of the Blackfoot and Clearwater Valleys and nearby communities. There has also been a recent ad campaign launched by the Montana Wilderness Association and Mountain Mamas calling on Senator Steve Daines, R – Montana, to give the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act (BCSA) a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. While Daines is being pressured to support the...
If the early history of Seeley Lake is intertwined with the lumber industry, the rise of the United States Forest Service is incontrovertibly intertwined with Seeley Lake and in particular with the Big Blackfoot Timber Sale of 1907-1910. Historian and member of the Camp Paxson Preservation Board Gary Williams has been researching that sale. The Seeley Swan Pathfinder will be bringing some of the interesting bits of information he has discovered about logging in the Seeley Lake area and also...
SEELEY LAKE - Friday, July 31, the National Park Service recognized the Seeley Lake community as a participant in its Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Sustainable Community Partnership Program. The Program celebrates Seeley Lake historic connection to Lewis and Clark’s 1803 expedition, known popularly as the Corps of Discovery expedition. In order to qualify for this designation, the National Park Service requires that a community demonstrates its connection to the Corps of Discovery and that the connection is showcased and celebrated i...
By the calendar, Montana has four seasons. Yet, increasingly, we are experiencing a fifth; fire season. As July draws to a close, a lot of us are starting to think what might be ahead as temperatures soar and our forests become increasingly dry. The Seeley Lake community won't soon forget the smoky summer of 2017 when the fire drove folks from town and shuttered businesses and schools – straining nerves, health and the local economy. The forests make the community beautiful but can also put it a...
