Park Board working with Rocky Boy with reservation recreation permits

Hill County Park Board voted Monday at their monthly meeting to do a six-month trial partnering with Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation to sell not only reservation fishing licenses, but Rocky Boy recreational permits, as well.

“Doing it on a trial basis is good for relationships between the reservation and us,” Hill County Park Board member Ursula Brese said.

Beaver Creek Park Superintendent Chad Edgar said he sees selling Rocky Boy recreational permits as a cooperative effort. 

“That’s the thing about in today’s society where everyone is trying to divide everything, it’s strong for Hill County and Rocky Boy Reservation to show everybody that, ‘hey, we are still trying to work together and live together and be neighbors,’” Rocky Boy Game Warden Christopher Wolf Chief said a fishing license and a recreation permit are not the same thing and that one can’t be used as the other.

“If you have the fishing license, you can hike into the fishing pond, you are OK there where your fishing license covers you there,” Wolf Chief said. “What the fishing license don’t cover is like … when you pull off to a campsite to recreate to have a picnic and stuff like that.”

He said part of the problem is when Beaver Creek Park gets busy, people come onto the reservation — the park’s southern region borders the reservation — but they don’t have a reservation recreational permit.

He added that Rocky Boy sells recreational permits at Bing ’N’ Bob’s Sport Shop and fishing licenses Stromberg Sinclair.

The permit looks like a bright yellow square sticker that lists different types of recreational activities that have to be checked off to show the permit uses, the expiration and the vehicle’s license plate number.

Wolf Chief said the permits are $15 for one day, $25 for three days and $50 for all year, but his team is looking at changing the prices, adding that tribal members do not need a pass.

He said requiring a recreational permits on Rocky Boy is not new, it just hasn’t been enforced and he and his team are working now to enforce it.

“Before we got there, it was like Rocky Boy was the Wild West,” Wolf Chief said. “You know, you have people doing all sorts of crazy stuff they shouldn’t be doing.”

“The problem is, people don’t realize they need one and then they don’t know where to get them,” Edgar said.

Wolf Chief said Rocky Boy will be creating a Facebook page letting people know more information, as well as creating brochures that will be coming soon.

The topic of beavers and beaver trapping once again came up at the meeting.

Fran Buell of Gildford discussed an email she sent to the Hill County Park Board and the Hill County commissioners in which she said she left last month’s meeting with more questions and concerns than answers.

“I would again request that the certified trapper education instructor be allowed to be part of the agenda of a future Hill County Park Board meeting,” Buell said in her email to the board. “This instructor would bring equipment to the meeting, explain to the board and public in attendance how trapping has developed into a  humane, ethical and responsible part of wildlife management in Montana.”

She said Monday that she was told by the board that if she brought in an instructor it had to be at a different time than the meeting.

She added that people don’t understand a lot of things about beavers and said a book called “Beaver Restoration Guidebook” provides commentary to people of how to take care of beavers in the park or anywhere else.

“The beavers want to be out at Beaver Creek Park because it has everything (they need),” she said. “It has willows, it has aspens, it has other trees … and it has all the grasses (they need).”  

Buell said the book reports the average Montana colony has 4.1 beavers.

“I just want you (the board and the public) to be aware there are things and other areas that need to be covered and that need to be talked about and listened to, not just from members of the park board, and I wish more public input (would be put) in,” she said.

She said that after last month’s meeting and last month’s article on the meeting she had received a lot of letters from people in support of controlling the beavers in Beaver Creek Park due to people having so much trouble with them.

Hill County Park Board chair Steve Mariani said if Buell was able to provide someone it would have to be at a different time than the park board meeting for people to get their questions answered.

Buell said she will find an instructor who will educate the trapping process and bringing in their equipment.

“I don’t have a problem with that, I’d love to learn,” Mariani said. 

The board also discussed possible alternative beaver management options with park board member Renelle Braaten.

Braaten said she had reached out to several people to come out to Beaver Creek Park, identify problem areas specifically done by beavers and provide an educational lesson on alternatives to trapping, but she didn’t want to bring anyone down here till she received the board’s OK.

“Before anyone will put any time on anything they want to know they are going to be able to do this, they aren’t going to go out and assess anything they have the OK,” she said.

“I don’t think there is a problem finding any problem area there or anywhere out there,” Mariani said. 

Mariani suggested to Braaten instead of having her people look at three to five different areas, they look at one section and go from there.

Braaten added that the people she spoke won’t even come, not even just to look at it, without being able to assess it.

The board continued to discuss her proposal, but the the other members agreed it is hard for them to let someone come down here who could have a different interpretation of what is identified as a problem. 

Lou Hagener of Havre said he wanted to to provide a written copy of his comments from last month’s meeting that were not recorded in the minutes. The comments concerned monitoring aerial herbicide applications in the Blackee Coulee area.

“I hiked the Blackee Coulee area to take photos of one of the existing monitoring sites and investigate the effect of aerial spraying activity Chad mentioned this past summer. Since herbicide applications are a substantial causal on vegetation communities, it is important to understand what the effects are in any monitoring program. It was  not clear to me what had happened and I talked with Chad and then (Hill County Weed District Supervisor) Terry Turner,” Hagener wrote.

He added that the Havre Daily News early this month reporting work to allow biological controls for the invasive weed houndstongue was encouraging.

A state advisory council is making recommendations to the federal government about how to allow the use of a beetle, the weevil Mogulones crucifer that was brought in to Canada to control the weed, in the United States.

Houndstongue is becoming more and more of a problem as takes over areas and drives out native plants in this region, including a major infestation in Beaver Creek Park.

“I urge the park board to get involved and stay involved with this effort including letters of support that Terry Turner can carry forward explaining our situation and capacity and willingness to develop demonstrations and monitoring of release sites,” he said.

Edgar said the park usage has been slow lately due to the cold spell that had hit and there is still some snow on the ground making some areas wet and slippery in some parts of the park.

“Onto cattle, cattle numbers are at 2,051 right now,” Edgar said. “We had two more hits on the road since last month which makes it seven now.”

The next park board meeting is Monday, Dec. 2, at the Timmons Room in the Hill County Courthouse. Deadline to put items on the agenda for the next meeting is noon Nov. 22.