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Throughout the years, the Forest Service has had a lasting impact on the landscape and culture of the upper Swan Valley. Many residents were employed by the Forest Service from the local teenagers on the YACC (Young Adult Conservation Corps) crews, to the seasonal trail crews, fire crews, planting crews, spraying crews, building crews, fire lookouts, to the full-time employees. The Condon Work Center has remained an important part of the fabric of the community. When the Forest Service decided...
Fifty years ago, a new law significantly altered the landscape of wildlife conservation in the U.S. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) turned 50 on Dec. 28, 2023, providing an opportunity to reflect on its lasting impacts for species of all kinds, including grizzlies. After two centuries of willful persecution of wildlife in North America, the ESA formalized into our federal structures a counterforce of conservation. Environmental historian Dan Flores, who gave a webinar for Vital Ground last...
SUMEMR SALES ON PACE WITH PREVIOUS YEAR Following four years of a dramatic covid-19 real estate market that saw rapid price appreciation, very limited inventory and multiple offers on many properties, the past two years have seen sales in the local market stabilizing. Locally, we are coming off a real estate run with virtually no inventory, to an increasing inventory. Nationally, active home inventory for sale is 22% higher than it was this same time last year. Properties with unique aspects like creek front, bordering forest service, mountain...
The Seeley Lake area is no stranger to wildfire and smoke. Both are a seasonal hazard here and can be unpredictable. We never know exactly where a lightning bolt will strike or a campfire will be left to wander, and often the smoke filling our valley comes from hundreds of miles away - beyond our control and reach. While there is a lot about wildfires that we individually cannot control, we can work to be prepared for the inevitability of their occurrence and effects. We know that it is not a...
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been doing forest conservation in the Blackfoot and Seeley-Swan Valleys since the mid-1970s and when we heard the announcement of the Pyramid Mountain Lumber mill closure this spring, like for so many in the community, it was a gut punch. Local Montana mills and all the contractors they support are a vital part of reaching our collective forest restoration and conservation goals, and we recognize that the economics of running a mill in Montana have gotten harder and harder. There has been nearly no change in...
On a sunny autumn day, in a beautiful little slice of Montana, two people bob up and down in the chest-deep water of a beaver pond wrestling with a giant tube attached to a fence. Their names are Elissa and Elyssa, which I know can be confusing, and they are both some of the leading experts in western North America on protecting human infrastructure from beavers. The giant tube Elissa and Elyssa are wrestling runs through a notch in a broad, decades-old beaver dam. Pretty much as soon as the pip...
The fate of Pyramid Lumber has been very much a topic of local discussion over the last few months. It isn’t just the employees and owners of the mill that will be affected if it closes. Foresters, loggers and truckers are all part of the machinery that generates “timber dollars.” More than recreation, those “timber dollars” are what caused Seeley Lake and the Seeley-Swan Valley to grow in a stable fashion and become complete communities with schools, churches, grocery stores, hardware stores, auto parts, pharmacies and even a medical/d...
The winter of 2024 will be remembered as one of the driest winters on record for Montana. According to the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the average statewide snow water equivalent (a measure of how much water is in our snowpack) was only about an inch above the 30-year-average record low in March. In the Mission Mountains of the upper Swan River watershed, the snow water equivalent was 36% below average. These conditions aren't a complete surprise, as forecasters predicted that...
Community-wide giving campaigns are a growing trend in the nonprofit world. Place-specific giving days are happening around Montana this month. The Seeley Lake Community Foundation is now running our community-giving campaign, the Change Your Pace Challenge, for the month of May. Let’s take a deeper look into this popular form of philanthropy. Giving Tuesday — the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — is the most well-known giving day in the US. It was formed in 2012 as a response to commercialization and consumerism in the post-Thanksgiving seaso...
During the early to mid-twentieth century several upper Swan Valley dude ranches were at the height of operation, providing packing and guiding services to guests from around the world. Holland Lake Lodge and 33 Bar Ranch In 1924, Roria "Babe" Wilhelm, along with his sister, Ada, and her husband, Art White leased land from the Forest Service and built the Mountain View Hotel near Holland Lake. The hotel was built with lumber from Babe's steam-powered sawmill and sided with half-logs to give the...
Layered onto the diverse landscapes that grizzly bears call home is another, equally variable ecosystem: the human one. As bears exit their winter dens in search of food and mates this year, be it in sprawling sagebrush steppes, high-elevation whitebark pine stands, or willow-lined waterways, their success will be determined by the availability of social habitat - the tolerance and attitudes that enable coexistence - as much as physical habitat. As a collective, we humans wield immense...
Ever since Pyramid Lumber announced their upcoming closure, I have been asked one question by clients, friends and community members more often than any other: How will the mill closing affect real estate? Before I expound on that, there are many other things appropriately considered. First and foremost are the 100 employees that will be without a job. Behind each one of those employees are families that count on the wages brought home from the mill and without those wages, those families will be adversely impacted. Then there are the loggers,...
While researching the history of the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area (Game Range), local nonprofit Protect the Clearwater (PTC) found an article written by Jay Kolbe in 2007. Kolbe was the Wildlife Management Area Manager and Wildlife Biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) for the area at that time. PTC feels this article highlights the critical role the Game Range plays and is worth reprinting. When the Clearwater Resource Council met this summer to identify some of...
A robin sits atop the slow awakening western larch branch, pauses a moment, then chimes into song before rising into the early morning air. Spring is here. With spring's early appearance across western Montana, we see animals and people alike preparing for the change. Snow melting off the north side of Rice Ridge, and Salmon and Seeley Lake becoming no longer available to committed ice fishermen, reminds us that it's time to prepare for warmer weather. Yard clean-up begins for fire season peeks...
Soup’s on is an iconic call to come eat what’s been prepared. I am fascinated with food history! I quickly learned from a Google search that the phrase comes from a German word “sup, or suppa,” meaning some kind of hot broth meant for soaking bread. The phrase “soup’s on,” or “soup’s up” no longer refers exclusively to soup, however. Soup is no longer described simply, as a broth. Now there are countless varieties from which to choose: hot, cold, commercially canned, homemade, spicy, sweet, savory, with pasta, rice, beans, vegetables, etc. It...
The winter of 2023/2024 brought a ton of sunshine and blue skies to Seeley Lake, and it also brought a ton of challenges for the ROCKS team as we struggled to keep our winter recreational areas functional and fun. No strangers to adversity, we who rely so heavily on the weather, everyone persevered. While our winter activities looked a wee bit different from normal years, we skated and we skied whenever we could. As we maintained the yurt with the Nordic Ski Club, we marveled at the ingenuity with which they forged ahead with a paltry amount...
Have you ever been driving Highway 83 and noticed the surface of Salmon Lake rippling with rising fish? It's likely what you were seeing weren't trout, but rather the landlocked version of sockeye salmon called kokanee. These mini salmon have been stocked in the Clearwater chain of lakes for over half a century by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks to provide recreational fishing opportunities. The story of the Clearwater kokanee is interesting and involves biology, laboratory science and most impor...
One of the many things I love about Seeley Lake is the volunteerism I see everywhere. When I bought my home here almost 10 years ago, one of the things I planned to do when I retired to Seeley full time was volunteer in some fashion to serve the community. That is actually how I ended up on the DARLOA BOD. I felt that the DARLOA BOD had arrived at a more harmonious place than it had been in some preceding years and I wanted to help keep it that way. Of course HOA’s have a way of always having some contention and DARLOA (being quite large) is n...
Climate change refers to a change in a climate system that persists for long periods of time, irrespective of the cause. Montana has such an interesting history of environmental changes over the years. At one time western Montana lay beneath a lake approximately 2,000 feet deep. Ice dams 4,000 feet tall that blocked the Clark Fork River burst causing the 3,000 square mile Glacial Lake Missoula to drain in less than a week into the Pacific Ocean. Much of the rock formations and other geology we...
For time immemorial Indigenous people burned low-intensity fires across this landscape to manage forests for people and wildlife. Wildfire suppression actions over the last 100 plus years have created dense forests with high wildfire risk. Forests that were once open with widely spaced trees created by regular low intensity fires are now crowded with thickets of small trees no longer regulated by fires. Removal of fire from the landscape has affected the historic mosaic and patchwork of differing ages and size classes of trees. We now see...
The Blackfoot Challenge recently learned of the deaths of four trumpeter swan cygnets hatched to Blackfoot swan 3A6 in Sheridan, Wyoming. Swan 3A6 was released in the Blackfoot in 2016 and nested in the Sheridan area this year. The cygnets were determined to have died of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), or avian flu. While the current strain of avian flu is highly deadly to domestic poultry, it appears to be much less lethal to most wild birds. However, waterfowl (birds like ducks, geese, swans, coots, grebes, etc.), some raptor...
December is a busy, generous month. The giving spirit of the holiday season often moves people to support the causes they love. As year-end approaches, people also evaluate tax consequences and work to maximize their contributions. At the end of 2023, the Seeley Lake Community Foundation received a very generous gift of $10,000 earmarked for our endowment. How did this happen? The donor simply called up the SLCF office to talk about what he was looking to do. Together we figured out the mechanics of this gift, and made it happen before his...
Well-known author and forester Bud Moore began trapping at the age of fourteen and spent several winters in the 1930s running trap lines in the Lochsa backcountry. After working over 40 years with the US Forest Service, he retired in 1974. Anxious to get back to his roots and the land, he and his wife Janet moved to Swan Valley where they managed their 80-acre Coyote Forest. Later, he wrote the book, The Lochsa Story: Land Ethics in the Bitterroot Mountains. Beginning in 1983 at the age of 66, he spent a couple of winters living out of a tent...
As bears rest in their dens and families gather for the holidays, there is much to celebrate in the world of wildlife conservation-and much more work ahead. For grizzly bears, the slow march toward durable recovery in the lower 48 states continues, with populations making gradual gains in 2023 and bears reclaiming historic range, including the first documented grizzly sighting in the Missouri River Breaks region of North Central Montana in more than a century. As the grizzlies' numbers and...
Happy to fill in last minute for this week’s Place for All column. Then I got stressed about creating some incredibly wise words to share with the Seeley Lake community. Oh well, lean into your strengths. I love quotes. So here are a few good ones to get us through the end of the year. Happy holidays everyone! “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from surviving bad judgment.” -Waldo Pritchard “A perfectionist walked into a bar. Apparently it wasn’t set high enough.” – Indian Hills Community Center “We cannot do great things...
