Rocky Barker: McCain grizzly earmark story raises questions on his focus

Senator McCain doesn’t like “earmarked” congressional spending for special local projects. There is one story he has told for a long time about this kind of “waste.” It’s that of the Montana grizzly bear DNA study. It always gets a great laugh, generates some outrage, and he convinces many of his point of view.

Anyone who knows the slightest about the grizzly DNA project knows, however, that his interpretation of the study is entirely wrong.

Rocky Barker writes about it today in his blog, “Letters to the West”.

McCain grizzly earmark story raises questions on his focus. Rocky Barker. Idaho Statesman

Back to the drawing board on Hebgen Lake repair (Must read)

I notice a lot of people have been reading this story on the gate failures at Hebgen Dam, the news of which was first brought to us on Sept. 1 by “Idahosal.” (Salle)

They thought they had the way to fix the broken headgates at the dam, but it failed.

Oh Oh1 PPL back to the drawing board on Hebgen repair. AP

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Sept. 9

The news now is grim. The bulkhead plan did not work. There was too much turbulence at the dam intake for them to place the steel plate and stem the flow. At the moment there does not seem to be a “plan B”. The flow is still at springtime level. They are losing more than 5 inches of reservoir water elevation every 24 hours and this will accelerate as the level drops due to the cone shape nature of the reservoir bed. There are two scenarios that are scaring us at the moment.

Read the rest at http://www.mrfc.com/MadisonRiverMontanaFishing/MadisonRiverReport.aspx

Sept. 11. Remove boats before they are stranded, Hebgen Lake propert!y owners told. AP

Latest. Sept. 16. Progress slow in Hebgen Dam repair.  By Andy Malby, editor. The Belgrade News

A complete table of Yellowstone wolves 1995-2008

The other day Ken Cole sent me a remarkable piece of work of his. He had taken the data I have put up since 1995 and added some additional data and made a file showing every wolf that was radio-collared in the Yellowstone Park from 1995-2008.

It was a very large Excel file, which I have converted to a pdf. My conversion isn’t perfect, but I think you can read it and use it fairly well by enlarging it to 100%

Note that the table also includes the data for the first 2 years of Idaho wolves (those wolves brought from Alberta and British Columbia and released in central Idaho).

YNP-wolf-collaring-table

When I get the time, I might try to clean up the defects in my conversion.

Thanks, Ken. This is good stuff.