By Micah Drew, Jordan Hansen and Keila Szpaller
“Since 2024, we’ve recycled more metal than we’ve mined.” — Sibanye Stillwater Senior Vice President and General Counsel Heather McDowell in an update following the company’s unfair trade case against Russia.
Data Delights: 15.82
That’s Olympians per capita in Montana.
According to sports media site Action Network, Montana ranks sixth in per capita contributions to the nation’s winter Olympians and Olympic medal haul.
Montana has sent 18 athletes to the winter Olympics over the years — including two in the 2026 games in Milan-Cortina.
Helena’s Konnor Ralph finished fifth in the men’s freestyle big air competition earlier this week, while Whitefish’s Jake Sanderson has helped propel the U.S. hockey team into the finals.
Montana’s previous Olympians have combined for four medals — two by alpine skier Tommy Moe, one by freestyle skier Eric Bergoust, and one by freestyle skier Bryon Wilson.
~ Micah Drew
Roosevelt, Republicans and environmental rollbacks
Last month, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, cochair of the Public Lands Caucus, was reported to have whipped votes to overturn a 20-year minerals ban on roughly 255,500 acres of National Forest land, paving the way for future mining operations just miles from the popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Support for the proposal broke along party lines, but more and more conservation and sportsmen's groups have pushed for officials to oppose it, including Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
The latter is of note, because the group honored Zinke with its top conservation award last year, and because Zinke has long tried to associate himself with the conservation-minded president.
Even more interesting, is that this week in a rare foray into politics, four descendants of Roosevelt wrote an open letter to the U.S. Senate urging them to protect the land near the Boundary Waters, saying that Roosevelt would have been “appalled” at the House vote.
Representatives for Zinke did not respond to questions by the Daily Montanan seeking a response to the Roosevelts’ letter.
The proposal is now before the senate with a vote likely to come next week.
Among the senators being watched as potential swing votes is Montana’s U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, who has roots in Minnesota.
In a statement regarding a proposed mine near the bitterroot in Montana, Sheehy stated “local voices must be heard loudest when considering public lands policy,” and the U.S. Forest Service environmental assessment on the 20-year moratorium on mining in the area drew more than 250,000 public comments, with a vast majority in favor of a ban.
~ Micah Drew
New book coming out on Copper King Marcus Daly
A new book is coming out about Marcus Daly, one of Montana’s Copper Kings.
Author Brenda Wahler of Helena shared the good news with us. It’s fun to read about another Copper King, W.A. Clark, because he was such a scoundrel, but it sounds like Wahler found a conniving side to Daly that’ll be interesting to read about.
Here’s the announcement from Arcadia Publishing:
Arcadia Publishing is pleased to announce the publication of “Marcus Daly's Montana Empires: Copper Mining, Racehorses, & Politics,” by Brenda Wahler.
This compelling installment concludes the story of Montana's influential copper king that began with “Marcus Daly's Road to Montana.” Together, these volumes form the first comprehensive biography of Marcus Daly since 1956, offering fresh insights into one of Montana's most complex and powerful figures.
With business savvy honed in the West’s rowdy mining camps, Marcus Daly rose from poor Irish immigrant to Gilded Age magnate. From the mines of Butte to America’s largest smelter in a town he also named Anaconda, Daly’s Anaconda Copper Company made a fortune. He used it to build his dream — a Bitterroot Valley ranch and a horse racing empire that stretched from California to New York. Meanwhile, his gregarious and generous façade hid a sly manipulator, one locked in a battle for political dominance with rival copper king W.A. Clark. With detailed research and more than one hundred photographs, historian Brenda Wahler peels back the layers of a complex industrialist, revealing his historic influence and legacy.
A fourth-generation Montanan who lives near Helena, Wahler is an attorney, author, independent historian, and horsewoman. She previously authored “Montana Horse Racing: A History and Marcus Daly’s Road to Montana” for The History Press.
We’ll keep our eyes out for book readings.
Also, I told you I was going to see “Seized,” right, about the raid on the Marion County Record? It showed last weekend as part of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and I recommend it if it ever comes your way.
It offered different perspectives from an older newspaper man and a younger journo, some difficult-to-digest (for those of us in the business, anyway) views on the paper from townspeople, and, my favorite, a look at the mouthy 98-year-old walker-throwing woman who was an owner of the newspaper and definitely had an opinion about where the officers who were raiding her home should go.
~ Keila Szpaller
