Forest Jobs and Recreation Act ~ Plea for support from Montana Wildlife Federation

The following is a copy of a letter forwarded by the current President of the Montana Chapter of the Wildlife Society.  I am sharing it here as an invitation to review the draft in order to form an opinion (based on your own review).  I've not researched it yet, but wanted to share it sooner than later regardless of what I eventually find I feel about it.  Please read on and follow the links!

Dear MWF family and Friends.

As you all know, the Montana Wildlife Federation has been a long time supporter of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. We were supportive before it was introduced, and we continue to support the enhanced version that is currently introduced. FJRA has long been promoted as a jobs bill, and we certainly agree with that, but at its heart, this bill is about elk and trout, and those of us who wrack our brains and bodies searching for them.

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Beautiful (noxious invasive) weeds

When I post pictures of my yard and the empty lot next to us, they almost always show at least one species of invasive weed.  The former owners of our house kept that acre to build on later, and our weeds mostly occur adjacent to that lot, as it has just about every local problem weed species. 

When we were considering buying the house, the owners said they would be maintianing thier lot and that we could play on it whenever we wanted.  Unfortunately, it has only been maintained by other neighbors who were willing to help her out and/or thought they were helping us out (which they were, I just wasn't happy because it felt like they were being taken advantage of, given that they all had major health problems while the former owner made six figures on her un-kept promise to maintain the property). 

I don't mind the tall grass (except for all of the extra mice we get when it goes unmowed all summer) but the property is full of invasive weeds.  Pretty terrible ones that we would be actively abating if we found them on national forest lands (I even got grants in three areas to help get rid of some of these same species).  The hawkweed was beautiful the first year we lived here (orange-red flower in the photo above), but this is a LOT of hawkweed. 

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Kids catching little crabs at the beach (video)

This is a video from earlier this summer.  We were in Snohomish, Washington, visiting my aunt, brother, sister-in-law, and cousin and took a detour with my aunt to hang out the beach.

When I was a kid, my grandmother would take us to Salt Water Park and we would gather little crabs like this for hours and hours.  The other adutlts took us, too....it was just often my grandma that said yes when we begged to go and often let us bring a few home.

It was a lot of fun to watch my kids help fill other kids buckets.  Christopher was very taken with rocks that day, and every day since.  He keeps finding heart shaped rocks for me, but they've all been in Glacier, so I couldn't keep them.

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