Glacier News

Like the long tail of a sleeping dragon, northwestern Montana's jagged peaks snake their way across several hundred square miles of ancient glacial plains. At first glance, this slice of the Northern Rockies, with its massive flanks carpeted by Douglas fir, spruce and lodgepole pine, looks perfectly healthy.

-->If each year was a page, Glacier National Park's storybook would stack as high as 400,000 copies of the entire Harry Potter series. Spanning 1.6 billion years, Glacier's tale is one of tremendous pressure, bubbling lava, rifts in the earth that separated even the hardest rock and diamond-sharp icebergs carving peaks and valleys.

The spectacular Many Glacier Valley has long been understood as one of the nation's most biologically important crossroads, the place where mountain slope meets prairie meadow, where three great drainages converge and several vegetation zones overlap. It is home to a remarkable assemblage of wildlife, and also to hundreds of thousands of Glacier National Park visitors who each summer clog the roadways while craning their necks for views of Rocky Mountain critters. Vehicles idle bumper to bumper, traffic stalled in "bear jams" and "sheep jams," even mundane "coyote jams."

Montana's summer tourism season wasn't as bad as expected - and was far better than in surrounding states and most of the rest of the country. It helped that visitor numbers at the major national parks in Montana soared above those for the 2008 season. Visitation was bolstered by locals vacationing closer to home and by publicity sparked by filmmaker Ken Burns' PBS documentary featuring the nation's parks as "America's Best Idea," said Betsy Baumgart, administrator of the Montana Promotions Division.

The superintendent of Glacier National Park says the park should be formally designated as a wilderness area where new roads and other development would be prohibited. Glacier Superintendent Chas Cartwright is scheduled to speak about the idea Tuesday evening at the Blackfoot River Brewing Company in Helena. The proposed Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act would designate more than 23 million acres as wilderness. The proposed areas include Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park’s Education Program and the Glacier Association are again sponsoring a postcard contest for K-12 students. As Glacier approaches its 100th anniversary, the focus for this year’s contest relates to the Centennial themes of “Celebrate, Inspire, and Engage.” In particular, to “engagement” as the next 100 years of Glacier’s future depends on the participation of today’s youth in helping to protect and preserve park resources. The purpose of the postcard contest is to promote learning and stewardship of Glacier National Park through the creation of messages from

A team of scientists from the United Nations is visiting Glacier National Park, assessing potential threats posed by mining plans in Canadian wildlands upstream of the park. Glacier, in partnership with adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, was named a World Heritage Site in 1995; that UNESCO designation recognizes the area's spectacular natural resources, including its diversity of wildlife and its role as a "biological crossroads."

Every year when elementary school students from the Flathead Valley attend classes at the Glacier Institute's Big Creek Outdoor Education Center, instructors ask them the same question: How many have ever been to Glacier National Park?Without fail, the answer is the same in each class. Only half the students, if not fewer, have ever set foot inside the park.The Glacier Institute has been working for a quarter century to change that.

Visitors to Glacier National Park have only a few more weeks to drive across the entire length of the historic Going-to-the-Sun Road. Park officials say they will close the road from Avalanche to Logan Pass at midnight on Sept. 20 for construction. Hikers and cyclists will be able to go past Avalanche for some time afterward. On the east side of the park, the road will be open to Logan Pass until Oct. 19 unless severe storms move in.

One of Glacier Nati

I met a national park ranger who had been traveling the States for the past two years, national park to national park. I jumped on the opportunity.

Two grizzlies at Montana's Glacier National Park were killed by park officials last week — one, unfortunately, unintentionally.

WEST GLACIER, Mont. (AP) — The Obamas are not the only ones with presidential connections to hit national parks this summer.

The deaths of two grizzly bears in Glacier National Park last week has caused a stir in western Montana as bear biologists evaluate the park’s decision to remove a mother and two of her cubs.Biologist Charles Jonkel of the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula disagreed with the killings and reported numerous phone calls from concerned residents.“The level of anger down here, oh my God, it’s unbelievable,” Jonkel said. “All kinds of people are calling me and they are mad.”

The news was mixed this week as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would move forward on a review of 29 plant and animal species and assess their inclusion on the federal endangered species list. The fact that the agency is considering listing any species represents a change from the last eight years. But the service also rejected petitions for nine species, including the ashy storm-petrel, a California seabird.