Environment

State and Federal wildlife managers are offering a first-of-its-kind summit on grizzly bear education in Helena this week.

Grizzly bears that make their way into the Bitterroot Ecosystem will have Endangered Species Act protections. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials made that announcement a letter to National Forests in the area Tuesday.

Conservation groups Tuesday announced plans to sue the Trump Administration over a decision that would allow federal officials to kill or remove more than 70 grizzly bears over the next decade near Yellowstone. Officials say this is necessary because of increasing conflicts with people and property on U.S. Forest Service land.

A lengthy legal fight over an oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park continued Tuesday in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. heard arguments over the U.S. Interior Secretary’s authority to cancel the lease. 

Former U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in 2016 canceled the last two remaining oil and gas leases in the disputed area near the Rocky Mountain Front. Moncrief Oil and Solenex LLC took the Interior Department to court arguing that the agency couldn’t suddenly change its mind.

Last week, Glacier National Park announced that it will be changing signs warning that its signature glaciers would disappear by 2020. The park says the signs, put in more than a decade ago, were based on the best available predictions at the time.

Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton spoke about what changed with Caitlyn Florentine, a research physical scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center.

A new study says it’s possible to rebuild a creek — destroyed by decades of mining — that once flowed through Butte. But it won’t be easy and it won’t come cheap.