The mystery of the missing bison.

By Micah Drew, Jordan Hansen and Keila Szpaller

“This decision is not about workplace conduct. It is about politics, power and money.” — Montana Public Service Commissioner Brad Molnar, pushing back against his one-year suspension without pay by Gov. Greg Gianforte, an action both described as unprecedented. But the governor said Molnar’s misbehavior also is unprecedented, warrants the measure, and would normally result in termination.

This week, on one of my morning commutes down the Flathead Valley, I was listening to the Sidedoor podcast, which tells stories related to the Smithsonian museums. 

It was a pleasant surprise that this week’s episode was directly related to Montana! 

The Missing Bison, fittingly released during National Bison Month, tells the story of William Temple Hornaday, chief taxidermist of the United States National Museum in the 1880s. 

Back then, bison were on the brink of extinction due to extreme hunting for their hides and as a way to subdue Indigenous tribes by removing a keystone species integrated into Native American life across much of the U.S. 

Hornaday trekked to Montana in 1886, and in the name of conservation, killed a few dozen bison and brought them back to D.C. to educate people about the animals and the idea of environmental conservation. 

A diorama of six taxidermied bison was displayed for years, including a large bull, which served as the model for the buffalo nickel and the Department of the Interior logo. 

But then, the bison vanished from the museum's collection sent back to Montana where the small herd was separated. 

You’ll have to listen to the podcast episode to get the full story, but it ends with three larger-than-life bronze bison sculptures by Gary Staab getting installed at the entrance to the Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall this spring.

~Micah Drew

LightHawk offered a group of people the chance this week to fly over the Bitterroot Valley, all the way up to the headwaters of the West Fork.

The purpose of the trip was to see the place where a mine exploration project is being proposed.

U.S. Critical Materials wants to mine for “rare earth” minerals there, and it’s an unpopular project with Bitterrooters.

The Bitterroot Water Partnership wants people to see the area as it exists in connection with the rest of the Bitterroot River, the landscape and the economies they support.

It was my first introduction to LightHawk, which has a mission to use aviation to broaden people’s conservation perspectives.

LightHawk flies journalists, and I was fortunate to be on one of the flights. I did have an argument with my stomach along the way, but the experience in the sky was magical and worth it.

Northern Rockies program manager and volunteer pilot Chris Boyer flew his little plane (I wish I remembered the type but it’s older and beautiful and looks meticulously cared for) with me and Alex Ocañas of the Bitterroot Water Partnership.

Boyer and I exchanged a couple of emails after the flight.

I was curious to hear more from him about LightHawk and also something he said on the flight, about how good it was to see the braided Bitterroot River in comparison to the Madison.

Here’s what he said about LightHawk:

“(It was) founded in Santa Fe in 1980 by a young bush pilot, Michael Stewart, after organizing aerial tours for journalists to see the site of a proposed coal-fired power plant in Utah’s Kairparowits Plateau (in what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument). The photographs, stories and public understanding of the situation resulting from the flights inspired enough pressure to shut the project down. LightHawk blossomed from there, and has undergone many transformations since.

“A small staff and about 230 volunteer pilots nationwide, our primary goal is to allow people to ‘see for themselves’ the context of landscape projects, the interconnectedness of habitats and ecosystems, the beauty of the landscape, and the folly of administrative boundaries. There’s an inherent objectivity to the aerial view which prevents a selective presentation of the evidence—you get to see it all.

“We are funded by grants, foundations, and individual donors, but perhaps the most impressive asset we have is the dedication and generosity of our volunteer pilots, and their commitment to conservation and sustainable landscape management.

“As a Volunteer Pilot, I feel a little sheepish about singing their praises, but as a staff member, I must. LightHawk requires 1,000 logged hours of PIC (pilot in command) time before considering an application to join the VP ranks. This is by far the highest requirement of any volunteer flying organization, and consequently, we have an amazing group of pilots — they are survey pilots, airline pilots, military pilots, bush pilots, and highly experienced general aviation pilots—there’s even a couple of astronauts in the ranks. Ray (who also flew in the Bitterroot last week) is a wildlife biologist with many thousands of hours conducting aerial surveys of pronghorns, bighorns and other wildlife throughout the west, especially in Arizona and Northern Mexico.”

Boyer, an aerial photographer and survey pilot based in Bozeman, said the pilots donate all the flight expenses. “Our pilots love to fly, are committed to conservation, and believe in the importance of the aerial view.  And it is certainly a lot more interesting and enjoyable than writing checks to nonprofits.”

“I … have been a volunteer pilot for LightHawk for about 20 years. I first heard about the organization when I only had 700 hours in my log book, and from that point on, every hour I flew represented a step closer to becoming a VP — it became a huge dream of mine. I filled out the application about an hour after I logged my 1,000th hour.”

And about the braided channel: “One of the epiphanies I had during my studies was the realization that rivers are not primarily in the business of moving water — the water is just side hustle, or perhaps more appropriately, just a tool to achieve the true ambition of moving sediment. They erode the outside banks of a meander, and deposit the eroded material on the inside bend, which creates and elongates the meanders in a river valley. This work is episodic, and in these snowmelt-dominated systems, occurs primarily during spring runoff. 

“When a meander gets too elongated, the river decides that it’s too much trouble to push water and sediment sideways across the valley, and chooses a more direct, downvalley/down hill route resulting in the constant erosion, deposition, and braiding of free flowing rivers like the Bitterroot, Big Hole, West Gallatin, Flathead, etc.

“The other miraculous process is that willows and cottonwoods have evolved to take advantage of the fresh depositional surfaces — the raw unvegetated bars to maximize their chance of germination and survival. So just as the floods of spring are receding, they release their seeds to be deposited on the freshly tilled seedbeds that the river created for them.

“When a dam is put on a river, like the Madison, the work of erosion and deposition is severely diminished because the dams capture and hold the peak flows of runoff, and they trap the sediment from upstream, starving the river of fresh depositional material. The rivers no longer braid, and the cottonwoods and willows no longer have a clean seedbed. Without this regeneration, the riparian forest disappears.”

Thank you, Chris and LightHawk.

~ Keila Szpaller

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