The Montana Conservationist September 6

Greetings readers! It’s time for The Montana Conservationist. This week, there’s a lot of new (or, newly appointed) faces in our conservation world:

• NRCS has appointed a new State Conservationist. Tom Watson, formerly the assistant state conservationist in Oregon, will be leading the agency in Montana.
• In Southwest Montana, high school students with the Montana Conservation Corps used rocks to help restore wet meadows in sagebrush country. Check out the structures they built!
• Last week, the Montana Cattlewomen put on the Ranch Run. It’s a fantastic event that draws distance runner from around the state for 25 miles through ranch country, complete with educational signs about working lands.
• Salting the Earth: In North Dakota, farmers are struggling with some toxic byproducts of the oil boom.
• In the Deer Lodge Valley, where Super Fund cleanup of the Clark Fork River is continuing, scientists are using birds as a barometer for the project’s success.
• Mussels have been getting a lot attention lately for the destructive members of their family. But there are some species that can actually help clean water. A project on the Anacostia watershed has put them to work.
• We’ve heard a lot about the decline of the honeybee. The New York Times reports that some orchards and other pollinator dependent farmers are responding to the loss of honeybees by bringing other kinds of native bees! Just remember, we were fans of alternative pollinators before they were cool.

All of that, and more! Read the Montana Conservationist for September 6, 2018: TMC 2018-09-06