MONTANA Winter 2014-2015 NTO PROMOTE ANDa CULTIVATE THEt APPRECIAuTION, UNDERSTANDINGr AND SaTEWARDSHIP OFli NATURE THROUGHs EDUCATtION Drama on the Front Blue Sky, Blue Snow | A History of Western Forests | Icy Creations MONTANA Naturalist Winter 2014-2015 inside Features 4 DRAMATIC LANDSCAPES Explorations on the Rocky Mountain Front BY TOM MCKEAN 9 6 4 FIRE SUPPRESSION OR CLIMATE CHANGE? Looking into the Causes of Western Wildfires Departments BY GIL GALE 3 TIDINGS 13 6 9 GET OUTSIDE GUIDE Historic wildfires; winter break science camps; winter word search; icy art projects 13 COMMUNITY FOCUS spectrUM inspires youth toward careers in science 14 FAR AFIELD Snow, Sky, and the Color Blue BY BECCA DEYSACH 14 16 IMPRINTS Fall Celebration & Auction recap; MNHC explores green screen Cover – This mountain lion (Puma concolor) is a technology; join us for naturalist captive animal at the Triple ‘D’ Ranch near Kalispell, trivia!; 2015 Master Naturalist MT. Many photographers visit to get close-up images courses of animals that are difficult to photograph in the wild, but the ranch also provides educational tours 18 for children and adults. Their goals include preserving MAGPIE MARKET endangered species, encouraging appreciation for wild creatures, and inspiring visitors to work towards 19 protecting decreasing wildland habitats. Photo REFLECTIONS courtesy of Elaine Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com. Wintry Observations 16 No material appearing in Montana Naturalist may be reproduced in part or in whole without the written consent of the publisher. All contents © 2014 The Montana Natural History Center. 2 MONTANA NATURALIST ~ WINTER 2014-2015 Connecting People with Nature 120 Hickory Street tidings Missoula, MT 59801 406.327.0405 www.MontanaNaturalist.org Executive Director Arnie Olsen Education Director Lisa Bickell JONG Assistant Education Director DE Brian Williams SON I Community Programs Coordinator ALL Y B Christine Morris HOTO Volunteer Coordinator & Editor, P Montana Naturalist & Field Notes Watching the winter sun set behind the trees at Lolo Pass. Allison De Jong Development & Marketing Director This fall I spent a week visiting my sister. She and her husband had just had Whitney Schwab their first child, and getting to meet their new little son was magical. He was three weeks old Naturalist and all the world was new to him. As the most well-rested adult in the house, I spent a lot of Alyssa McLean time cooking, cleaning, and doing dishes, but hanging out with my nephew was, of course, the Office Manager highlight. I would walk around the house holding him, his eyes solemnly resting on my face. I Deb Jones was constantly amazed by his complete helplessness and utter dependence on the adults around Executive Assistant him, and the weight of responsibility even I, a mere aunt, felt. Lena Viall And I realized that I felt responsible not only for helping ensure that his immediate Visiting Naturalist Instructors needs were met, but for making sure that the world he grows up into is a healthy, diverse, and Christine Wren sustainable one. Will the world he lives in as an adult still have wild places? Wild creatures? Will Volunteer Visiting Naturalist Instructors he get to experience the awe of seeing a moose stalking long-legged through the snow in a quiet Valerie Bayer forest, of coming across a freshly-laid mountain lion track? When he’s the age I am now, will the Rod Snyder world be a better place? Forest for Every Classroom & There are no easy answers to these questions. But despite the uncertainty, I find myself Education Intern ever inspired by the people and stories around me, like the folks at spectrUM helping young Thomas McKean people explore their world and find what they’re passionate about (page 13), or naturalists like Board of Directors Tom McKean, Becca Deysach, and Val Aerni reveling in the natural beauty of the stunning Hank Fischer, President landscapes across our state and sharing their delight with others (pages 4, 14, and 19). And then Stephen Speckart, Vice President Marcia Kircher, Secretary there are people like Gil Gale, an ecologist and wildland firefighter who’s pondering how the fire Betty Oleson, Treasurer management decisions we made a century ago are affecting us today in hopes that we can make Julie Cannon better decisions for the future (page 6). Janice Givler Kelly Willet Though we can’t predict what the future holds, there are myriad ways to work towards Susie Graham making it the best possible. Whether it’s finding something we’re passionate about and pursuing Ryan Huckeby it, or taking an honest look at both our personal and collective history so that we can learn from Sally Johnson our mistakes and make wiser choices, we have the power to create a better world—not only for Mark Metcalf Edward Monnig us but for the children who have just come into it. Rick Oncken Montana Naturalist May you enjoy a wonderful holiday season! Art Director Eileen Chontos Allison De Jong EDITOR [email protected] WINTER 2014-2015 ~ MONTANA NATURALIST 3 BY TOM MCKEAN Loving a Landscape: PHOTOS BY ZACK PORTER Drama on the Rocky Mountain Front Ancient reefs erupt across a frozen golden canvas, To access our trailhead, we circumnavigate the butte punctuated by pothole lakes. Beyond is the crown almost entirely in our cars. of our continent, a vast expanse of rocky peaks and Through windows we watch forest valleys. “I’m here for the birds,” I tell myself as I the dihedrals, open books of rock that rise out of the shrug off a deep chill, but I can’t seem to focus on them. grass below. Crown Butte is My binoculars drift up and away from the squatting a laccolith—an injection of molten rock between two other snow geese, and onto the steep distant crags painted a sedimentary layers which over welcoming orange by morning sun. I see the speckles of eons erode away. This laccolith was formed out of a rock called ponderosa pine in a matrix of grass on the foothills. shonkinite in pulses, giving the columns their layered brick I am in love with this As the day and our minds and mortar appearance. We landscape, the drama of prairie warm and the snow geese erupt step out of our cars and onto courting mountains and the off the mostly-frozen lake the thawing gumbo of a creek resilient life that calls it home. in large contiguous flocks to bed. A faint trail leads up the The Rocky Mountain Front feed in the barley stubble, we sloping side of the Butte’s least of central Montana epitomizes prepare ourselves for a short fortress-like facet. that love for me. I’m here, hike up one of the nearest high As we ascend the trail, the sharing that experience with points around. Crown Butte, breaks leading into the Sun friends, watching snow geese at a hunk of layered igneous River Valley come gradually Freezout Lake—an apt name if columns, stands proud and into view. Their broken ground I have ever heard one. imposing over the prairie. hides away fossils of Maiasaur, 4 MONTANA NATURALIST ~ WINTER 2014-2015 other extinct creatures, and the that characterize the species. food and roost, or simply paleontologists who search for These are krummholz forms, playing? OPPOSITE PAGE: them. The breaks are made stunted and twisted trees, The cold wind chaps Looking out over the Rocky up of ravines and arroyos, dry shaped by incessant wind. Grey my face, but I am cheered by Mountain Front from Crown Butte washes, formed by freezing and birds with striking black wings the midday sun, uninhibited near Simms, MT. thawing earth broken up and and slender black beaks— by clouds or pollution—so sculpted by water. This part of Clark’s Nutcrackers—flit pure I think I can smell it. I THIS PAGE: the prairie is not much good for elusively from tree to tree above look south to Haystack Butte (Top) Snow geese filling the big sky over Freezout Lake. human use, except maybe to lose us on the rocky escarpment as and beyond to Steamboat (Middle) Cresting the top of the Butte. a cow in its maze-like channels. we approach. Mountain. The prairie gets (Bottom) Approaching Crown Butte. The sides of the trail are The trail steepens once we more dimensional the closer it dotted with whitebark pine, but reach a shoulder of sedimentary gets to the mountains, like surf not the thick and burled ones ground still clinging to the breaking on a rocky coast. side of the great laccolith. Small bits of sandstone bulge The prairie gets out from the thin soil on the side hill, spilling crumbly pink more dimensional sand below. The trail leads to a the closer it gets small notch in the shonkinite rimrock. A short scramble up to the mountains, the exposed igneous rock leads like surf breaking to a wide rolling plateau of on a rocky coast. Idaho fescue and blue-bunch wheat grass. This grass has It is getting late in the never been heavily grazed by afternoon as we lounge, sketch, cattle and is a glimpse of what and take pictures, almost time the rest of the prairie might for the snow geese to return to have looked like 200 years ago. the lake for the evening. It is We scare a small band of quite a spectacle watching them mule deer out from a fold in all return at once. Hundreds the plateau; they lope nimbly of distinctive v-formations down the rocky cliff bands break down into seemingly out of sight as a cold gust of unorganized and awkward wind sucks the breath out of gaggles descending toward the my lungs.