© Ralph Maughan

The Rocky Mountain Front rises abruptly from the plains of Montana. It extends northward, with few intervening foothills for hundreds of miles, well into Alberta. It is one of the few places where grizzly bears still range down onto the plains. This beautiful country in Montana is has been threatened by oil and gas development proposals for many years.  In Alberta, much of the wildlife habitat on the Front has already been destroyed by massive natural gas developments. Fortunately in Montana, most of these development proposals have been held at bay.  In mid-1997, Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora of the Lewis & Clark National Forest rejected oil industry plans to lease most of the Front and withdrew the national forest from all oil and gas leasing for 20 years. This was one of the greatest environmental victories in Montana in recent years.

Update 2004. No place is secure from oil and gas development under the Bush Administration. They would like to rescind Supervisor Flora's order.

---

A natural gas facility in Spioncop Canyon on the Rocky Mountain Front, Alberta.

This Alberta facility extracts the hydrogen sulfide
("rotten egg gas") from the natural gas that occurs
under the Rocky Mountain Front.
Copyright © Ralph Maughan

I recently visited all of the canyons on the Front in Alberta. There were facilities like the one in the photo in every major canyon beginning at Yarrow Creek (the first creek north of Waterton National Park). This could be the future of Montana too, although since supervisor Flora's decision, a happier picture is more likely.  

---

Here is some information from the Montana Wilderness Association about on-going efforts to protect the Badger-Two Medicine Roadless Area which is part of the Rocky Mountain Front just south of Glacier National Park.

One of the most successful efforts to protect the Front has been carried out by the Nature Conservancy which has purchased land in and near Pine Butte Swamp, both in fee simple and as conservation easements.  This "swamp" (actually a fenn) is very important springtime grizzly bear country as well as a beautiful place.

---

The Sawtooth Wolf Pack of the Rocky Mountain Front-
In recent years, wolves naturally repopulated the Montana portion of the Front. The Sawtooth Pack was the first to do so. The pack was named after a prominent  Front landmark -- the Sawtooth Reef.

As an "endangered species," wolves in NW Montana have been given more protection than those north in Alberta. In Alberta they have essential no protection. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1996 on the Montana Front near Augusta, the indigenous Sawtooth Pack took to killing cattle. Eventually all but two of the adult wolves in the pack were dispatched by the federal Animal Damage Control, but ten of the pack's 14 orphan pups were taken to Yellowstone and placed in the Rose Creek enclosure. The enclosure already held two other wolves (yearlings). These two, no. 29M and 37F, were part of what biologists had hoped would become the Nez Perce Pack. that had been recaptured subsequent to their initial Park release because they migrated to population Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone.

The orphaned Sawtooth pups, now yearlings, were released in March and June of 1997. They did not fare as well as the other wolves released in Yellowstone. All but three of them are now dead. The three of the remaining Sawtooth wolves (now two years old) are being kept inside the Nez Perce enclosure.  They will be released in June 1998.  They have mated, however, and the female has whelped four pups from inside the pen.

One of the Sawtooth yearlings killed about 60 sheep near Pinedale, Wyoming summer of 1997 before being legally shot. Others were also shot while killing livestock.

Those wolves of the Sawtooth Pack that remained on the Front continued to kill cattle occasionally, and in late December 1997, the pack was finally exterminated when the ADC gunned down two of the remaining three wolves in the pack.

For those who have seen Jim Dutcher's videos and followed or helped the Wolf Education and Research Center in Winchester, Idaho, this wild Sawtooth Pack has absolutely nothing to do with the captive pack held near Winchester on the Nez Perce tribal reservation.

This page was first created in 1997, updated in 2004.

Return to Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Report