The Montana Conservationist, May 24

Greetings, readers! We have a great issue of the Montana Conservationist this week:

• A big welcome to our new Operations Manager, Melissa Downing
• Butte is celebrating the opening of Montana Craft Malt, which will malt exclusively Montana-grown barley and sell to Montana’s blossoming craft brewing economy
• The US Fish & Wildlife Service announces plans to retain management of the National Bison Range
• Matt Jaeger gives us a report on a flushing flow that was coordinated on the Beaverhead River to reduce fine sediment and improve the fishery
• NPR tunes in with an interesting story on sagebrush
• The Helena High School team repeated as winners of the Montana Envirothon, and the Helena Independent Record reports on some of the people & strategies that got them there
• The President delivered his budget plan to Congress this week, and naturally there are a lot of opinions going ’round. We have a highlight reel of a few of articles from our favorite news sources.
• Missoula Conservation District is launching a public input process to help them guide long-range planning for natural resources. We’re keeping an eye on the process in the hopes that the lessons they learn may be beneficial to other districts
• And if your organization is looking to build capacity, applications are now open to be a host site for a 2018 Big Sky Watershed Corps Member!

All of that, and the finer points, in this week’s TMC: TMC 2017-05-24