News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 261
BILLINGS — After four days with no answers, authorities said they were considering scaling back their search for a Montana math teacher who left her home for a pre-dawn run and never returned. The only publicized clue into Sherry Arnold's disappearance Saturday was a single running shoe, found by a ditch along her running route in her hometown of Sidney. FBI agent Deborah Bertrand said late Tuesday that tips were starting to come into an automated hotline set up for the case, but would not offer any details. The FBI and l...
BILLINGS — Authorities expanded their search Monday for a high school teacher who's missing from an oil boom town in northeast Montana, after recovering only a single running shoe since she failed to return from a weekend run. No solid evidence has emerged to indicate 43-year-old Sherry Arnold was kidnapped, authorities said. But FBI agents were called in to assist local law enforcement in the case, and an agency spokeswoman said the possibility of abduction was under investigation. AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, Larry M...
BILLINGS — The replacement of 1,200 wood stoves in Libby with newer, more efficient models has improved air quality, leading to associated health improvements for children in the northwest Montana town, according to a new study. Airborne particulate pollution in Libby dropped 30 percent over the course of the four-year study. The decline was associated with fewer reports of childhood wheeze, a condition commonly linked to asthma. Other health conditions showed less or no improvement. But study author and University of M...
BILLINGS — A group of wild bison was returned to Yellowstone National Park on Friday in a setback to a fledgling program that allowed the animals into parts of Montana where bison had long been prohibited. The roundup of the 13 animals came after they repeatedly left a 2,500-acre grazing area in the Gallatin National Forest, crossing the Yellowstone River and entering private property. After their capture, the animals were trucked just outside Yellowstone's northern border and released. Observers said the bison immediately m...
BILLINGS — Montana's newfound tolerance toward wild bison is heading to trial as cattle owners and local officials seek to prevent a repeat of last year's mass migration of hundreds of the animals out of Yellowstone National Park. State District Judge Wayne Phillips has been asked to settle a fundamental question: Are bison in Montana free-roaming wildlife, or should they be kept out to protect private property and public safety? AP Photo/Janie Osborne, File Bison Roam roam outside Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner on M...
BILLINGS — Montana wildlife officials say fish exposed to an Exxon Mobil Corp. oil spill into the Yellowstone River are safe to eat despite some crude found in their internal organs. Laboratory results disclosed Thursday by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks revealed no oil in fillets cut from about 60 fish taken from the river in mid-July. Trace amounts of oil were detected in the livers and gonads of some fish. Wildlife agency spokesman Robert Gibson says the contamination potentially could harm the health of the fish but n...
BILLINGS — Crews facing adverse weather forecasts rushed to bolster protective lines around blazes that have scorched tens of thousands of acres in the Northern Rockies, while firefighters in Oregon worked to corral a range fire that forced a kids' science camp to evacuate. Meteorologists warned that fire conditions would rise to critical Thursday afternoon and evening as thunderstorms roll across Montana, central Idaho and northwest Wyoming. The pattern of hot, dry weather and afternoon storms was expected to recur daily f...
BILLINGS — The state of Montana and Arch Coal, Inc. will line up together in state court Tuesday against environmental groups seeking to derail the company's plan to mine a 1.3 billion ton reserve within the most productive coal region of the country. St. Louis-based Arch has paid $159 million to the state and Great Northern Properties to lease the Otter Creek coal tracts, located near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. The deal has received strong backing from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who wants to c...
BILLINGS — A federal judge has ordered settlement talks in a multi-million-dollar dispute over bone castings from three famed tyrannosaurus rex specimens. Attorneys say the case is the first of its kind involving a copyright fight over dinosaur castings — fossil replicas often used in museum displays. It pits a South Dakota research company against a Montana nonprofit that allegedly made unauthorized copies of castings from two t-rexes, dubbed Stan and Sue. AP Photo/Black Hills Institute of Geological Research This image pro...
BILLINGS — A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region need continued protection under the Endangered Species Act due to the decline of a tree species that serves as a key food source for some of the animals. The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocks the federal government's effort to lift protections on about 600 threatened grizzlies across 19,000 square miles of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Such a move would have turned over management of the animals to state wildlife...
BILLINGS — Cleaning up tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil that spilled from a pipeline and fouled a popular stretch of Montana's Yellowstone River will cost Exxon Mobil an estimated $42.6 million, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press. About 42,000 gallons, or 1,000 barrels, of crude leaked into the waterway upstream of Billings, the state's most populous city, when the pipeline buried under the scenic river broke on July 1. Exxon Mobil's cost estimate includes $40 million for emergency respons...
BILLINGS — As many as 360 migrating wild bison would be shot by hunters in Montana, captured for slaughter or shipped elsewhere this winter under a proposal from Yellowstone National Park officials seeking an alternative to the indiscriminate slaughters of years past. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show officials are considering "selective culls" to help reduce the park's bison population from 3,700 animals to about 3,000. Some of this winter's anticipated decrease would come from natural deaths. AP Photo/Janie O...
WINIFRED — The head of the federal Bureau of Land Management returned to Montana on Monday with a message similar to the one he delivered to ranchers a year ago: No new national monuments. As part of a tour of rural communities across the West, BLM director Bob Abbey met with about 20 ranchers still upset over the creation of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument by former President Bill Clinton more than a decade ago. AP Photo/Matthew Brown Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey listens to Gary Slagel w...
BILLINGS — Montana ranchers are not likely to face new sanctions on cattle exports following yet another round of suspected brucellosis infections, signaling an effective truce in the long-running debate over the animal disease, state officials and outside veterinarians said. Tests are pending to confirm the suspected cattle infections, which officials said last week were found in a 150-head herd in southern Park County. Brucellosis causes pregnant animals to prematurely abort their young and is blamed for weight loss and o...
BILLINGS — Members of an influential Montana livestock group said Friday they are not ready to allow wild bison to roam freely outside Yellowstone National Park and instead want more done to control a disease carried by the animals. Rejecting calls from some ranchers to show more tolerance for bison, a Montana Stockgrowers Association committee instead passed resolutions advocating slaughter, contraceptive injections and other means to control the animals' population. The group also urged government agencies to reverse l...
BILLINGS— About 150 bison from Yellowstone National Park would be relocated onto state or tribal lands in Montana under a proposal announced Thursday as part of a long-stalled effort to establish new herds of the burly animals. After spending years in a government quarantine, the bison are disease-free and ready to move once the relocation is approved and fences are built, said Ron Aasheim with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. About $2 million would need to be spent on fencing for the two state-owned properties under c...
BILLINGS — Montana officials on Thursday announced environmental approval for a major oil pipeline from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast, but the proposal still needs approval from the federal government and Nebraska. TransCanada's 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. The project has been fiercely opposed by environmental groups and some landowners along the route, and the Obama administration l...
BILLINGS — The federal government is considering moving dozens of bison captured outside Yellowstone National Park to federal lands in South Dakota, Colorado and elsewhere, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Salazar told Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer that federal officials are looking at all options for moving Yellowstone bison onto federally managed lands. That includes Badlands National Park on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Great Sand Dunes N...
BILLINGS — The federal government is considering moving dozens of bison captured outside Yellowstone National Park to federal lands in South Dakota, Colorado and elsewhere, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Salazar told Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer that federal officials are looking at all options for moving Yellowstone bison onto federally managed lands. AP Photo/Janie Osborne,File Bison run near the entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner. That includes B...
BILLINGS — Leaders of Montana's Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians said Monday they expect a new election will be held next year to end a dispute over a 2009 vote that split the landless tribe into opposing factions. Notably absent from the ballot could be Chairman John Sinclair of Havre. Sinclair said Monday he likely will not run again after the turmoil that surrounded his last election. "At this point, I don't expect to run. Let's have an election and get it over with," he said. A three-judge panel of tribal law e...
BILLINGS — Attorneys from Montana and Wyoming squared off before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a cross-border dispute over how they share the region's scarce water supplies. Montana has accused its southern neighbor of taking too much water from the Tongue and Powder rivers, breaking a 1950 agreement between the states. Justice skeptical of Bullock argument But justices Monday voiced skepticism when Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock said new irrigation practices had put Wyoming in violation of the agreement. "...
LAUREL — State workers on Tuesday set fire to an oil-tainted logjam on an island along the Yellowstone River, the last of dozens of debris piles smeared with crude from an Exxon Mobil pipeline break that dumped 42,000 gallons of oil into the waterway. Two employees of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, Derek Yeager and Matt Wolcott, used drip torches to ignite the woody debris as Exxon Mobil contractors looked on. With a blast of heat and a spiral of smoke, the fire spread quickly through the o...
BILLINGS — Montana's governor said Monday he will not block the relocation of 68 bison to two American Indian reservations. Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week declared that no Yellowstone National Park bison could be moved within Montana. He cited mixed messages from the federal government on whether some quarantined bison could harbor the disease brucellosis. But Schweitzer said Monday the relocations can move forward because an Interior Department researcher said he believes the animals do not have the disease. AP P...
BILLINGS — Three people were killed in a remote area of the Crow Reservation and a manhunt was under way for a suspect who may be armed, authorities said Tuesday. FBI agents were on the reservation investigating the deaths, but had little information to release immediately beyond the number of victims, agency spokeswoman Deborah Bertram said. The killings took place about five miles south of Lodge Grass in a remote area of the southeast Montana reservation, Big Horn County Commissioner John Pretty on Top said. People were t...
BILLINGS — A central Montana precious metals mine was under a partial closure order Tuesday as authorities investigated the death of a worker who crashed while driving a piece of equipment 1,200 feet underground. The victim was identified by Stillwater Mining Company as Dale Alan Madson, 42, a lead equipment operator who had worked at the mine since 2008. AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, Larry Mayer, File This undated file photo shows Stillwater Mining Company's mine at Nye, Mont. Underground work has been suspended at a c...
