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Air quality also deserves brief mention. It may at first seem shameless for me, as a resident of the American city (Los Angeles) with the worst air quality, to say anything negative about Montana in this regard. In fact, some areas of Montana do suffer seasonally from poor air quality, worst of all in Missoula, whose air (despite improvements since the 1980s) is sometimes as bad as in Los Angeles. Missoula’s air problems, exacerbated by winter temperature inversions and by its location in a valley that traps air, stem from a combination of vehicle emissions throughout the year, wood-burning stoves in the winter, and forest fires and logging in the summer.
Montana’s remaining major sets of environmental problems are the linked ones of introductions of harmful non-native species and losses of valuable native species. These problems especially involve fish, deer and elk, and weeds.
Montana originally supported valuable fisheries based on native Cutthroat Trout (Montana’s state fish), Bull Trout, Arctic Grayling, and Whitefish. All of those species except Whitefish have now declined in Montana from a combination of causes whose relative impact varies among the species: less water in the mountain streams where they spawn and develop, because of water removal for irrigation; warmer temperatures and more sediment in those streams, because of logging; overfishing; competition from, and in some cases hybridization with, introduced Rainbow Trout, Brook Trout, and Brown Trout; predation by introduced Northern Pike and Lake Trout; and infection by an introduced parasite causing whirling disease. For example, Northern Pike, which are voracious fish-eaters, have been illegally introduced into some western Montana lakes and rivers by fishermen fond of catching pike, and have virtually eliminated from those lakes and rivers the populations of Bull Trout and Cutthroat on which they prey. Similarly, Flathead Lake’s formerly robust fishery based on several native fish species has been destroyed by introduced Lake Trout.
Whirling disease was accidentally introduced into the U.S from its native Europe in 1958 when a Pennsylvania fish hatchery imported some Danish fish that proved to be infected with the disease. It has now spread throughout most of the western U.S., partly through transport by birds, but especially as a result of people (including government agencies and private fish hatcheries) stocking lakes and rivers with infected fish. Once the parasite gets into a body of water, it is impossible to eradicate. By 1994 whirling disease had reduced the Rainbow Trout population of the Madison River, Montana’s most famous trout stream, by more than 90%.
At least whirling disease is not transmissible to humans; it is merely bad for fishing-based tourism. Another introduced disease, chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk, is of more concern because it might cause an incurably fatal human illness. CWD is the deer/elk equivalent of prion diseases in other animals, of which the most notorious are Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) of cattle (transmissible to humans), and scrapie of sheep. These infections cause an untreatable degeneration of the nervous system; no human infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has ever recovered. CWD was first detected in western North American deer and elk in the 1970s, possibly (some people suggest) because deer housed for studies at a western university in a pen near scrapie-infected sheep were released into the wild after completion of the studies. (Today, such a release would be considered a criminal act.) Further spread from state to state was accelerated by transfers of exposed deer and elk from one commercial game farm to another. We do not know yet whether CWD can be transmitted from deer or elk to people, as can mad cow disease, but the recent deaths of some elk hunters from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have raised alarms in some quarters. The state of Wisconsin, concerned that fear of transmission could cripple the state’s one-billion-dollar-per-year deer hunting industry, is in the process of killing 25,000 deer (a desperate solution that sickens everybody involved) in an infected area in hopes of controlling the CWD epidemic there.
While CWD is potentially Montana’s most frightening problem caused by an introduced pest, introduced weeds are already Montana’s most expensive such problem. About 30 noxious weed species, mostly of Eurasian origin, have become established in Montana after arriving accidentally in hay or as wind-blown seeds, or in one case being introduced intentionally as an attractive ornamental plant whose dangers weren’t anticipated. They cause damage in several ways: they are inedible or poorly edible to livestock and wild animals, but they crowd out edible plant species, so they reduce the amount of livestock fodder by up to 90%; some of them are toxic to animals; and they may triple rates of erosion because their roots hold the soil less well than do roots of native grasses.
Economically, the two most important of these weeds are Spotted Knapweed and Leafy Spurge, both now widespread throughout Montana. Spotted Knapweed takes over from native grasses by secreting chemicals that quickly kill them, and by producing vast numbers of seeds. While it can be pulled out by hand from selected small fields, it has now infested 566,000 acres in the Bitterroot Valley alone and 5,000,000 acres in all of Montana, an area far too large for hand-pulling to be feasible. Spotted Knapweed can also be controlled by herbicides, but the cheaper herbicides that kill it also kill many other plant species, and the herbicide specific for Spotted Knapweed is very expensive ($800 per gallon). In addition, it is uncertain whether the breakdown products of those herbicides end up in the Bitterroot River or in the aquifers used for human drinking water, and whether those products themselves have harmful effects. Because Spotted Knapweed has become established on large areas of national forest as well as of pastureland, it reduces the fodder production not only for domestic animals but also for wild herbivores in the forest, so that it may have the effect of driving deer and elk from forest down into pastures by reducing the amount of food available in the forest. Leafy Spurge is at present less widespread than knapweed but much harder to control and impossible to pull out by hand, because it establishes underground roots 20 feet long.
Estimates of the direct economic damage that these and other weeds cause in Montana are over $100,000,000 per year. Their presence also reduces real estate values and farm productivity. Above all, they are a huge pain in the neck for farmers, because they cannot be controlled by any single measure alone but require complex integrated management systems. They force farmers to change many practices simultaneously: pulling out weeds, applying herbicides, changing fertilizer use, releasing insect and fungus enemies of weeds, lighting controlled fires, changing mowing schedules, and altering crop rotations and annual grazing practices. All that because of a few small plants whose dangers were mostly unappreciated at the time, and some of whose seeds arrived unnoticed!
Thus, seemingly pristine Montana actually suffers from serious environmental problems involving toxic wastes, forests, soils, water, climate change, biodiversity losses, and introduced pests. All of these problems translate into economic problems. They provide much of the explanation for why Montana’s economy has been declining in recent decades to the point where what was formerly one of our richest states is now one of the poorest.
Whether or how these problems become resolved will depend on the attitudes and values that Montanans hold. But Montana’s population is becoming increasingly heterogeneous and cannot agree on a vision for their state’s environment and future. Many of my friends commented on the growing polarization of opinion. For instance, banker Emil Erhardt explained to me, “There is too much raucous debate here. The prosperity of the 1950s meant that all of us were poor then, or we felt poor. There were no extremes of wealth; at least, wealth wasn’t visible. Now, we have a two-tiered society with lower-income families struggling to survive at the bottom, and the wealthier newcomers at the top able to acquire enough property that they can isolate themselves. In essence, we are zoning by money, not by land use!”
The polarization that my friends mention is along many axes: rich versus poor, old-timers versus newcomers, those clinging to a traditional lifestyle versus others welcoming change, pro-growth versus anti-growth
voices, those for and against governmental planning, and those with and without school-age children. Fueling these disagreements are Montana’s paradoxes that I mentioned near the beginning of this chapter: a state with poor residents but attracting rich newcomers, even while the state’s own children are deserting Montana upon graduating high school.
I initially wondered whether Montana’s environmental problems and polarizing disputes might involve selfish behavior on the part of individuals who advanced their own interests in full knowledge that they were simultaneously damaging the rest of Montana society. This may be true in some cases, such as the proposals of some mining executives to carry out cyanide heap-leach gold extraction despite the abundant evidence of resulting toxicity problems; the transfers of deer and elk between game farms by some farm owners despite the known resulting risk of spreading chronic wasting disease; and the illegal introductions of pike into lakes and rivers by some fishermen for their own fishing pleasure, despite the history of such transfers having destroyed many other fisheries. Even in these cases, though, I haven’t interviewed individuals involved and don’t know whether they could honestly claim that they thought they had been acting safely. Whenever I have actually been able to talk with Montanans, I have found their actions to be consistent with their values, even if those values clash with my own or those of other Montanans. That is, for the most part Montana’s difficulties cannot be simplistically attributed to selfish evil people knowingly and reprehensibly profiting at the expense of neighbors. Instead, they involve clashes between people whose own particular backgrounds and values cause them to favor policies differing from those favored by people with different backgrounds and values. Here are some of the points of view currently competing to shape Montana’s future.
One clash is between “old-timers” and “newcomers”: i.e., people born in Montana, of families resident in the state for many generations, respecting a lifestyle and economy traditionally built on the three pillars of mining, logging, and agriculture, versus recent arrivals or seasonal visitors. All three of those economic pillars are now in steep decline in Montana. All but a few Montana mines are already closed, due to toxic waste problems plus competition from overseas mines with lower costs. Timber sales are now more than 80% below former peak levels, and most mills and timber businesses other than specialty firms (notably, log cabin home builders) have closed because of a combination of factors: increasing public preference for maintaining intact forests, huge costs of forest management and fire suppression, and competition from logging operations in warmer and wetter climates with inherent advantages over logging operations in cold dry Montana. Agriculture, the third pillar, is also dwindling: for instance, of the 400 dairies operating in the Bitterroot Valley in 1964, only nine still exist. The reasons behind Montana agriculture’s decline are more complex than those behind the decline in mining and logging, though in the background looms the fundamental competitive disadvantage of Montana’s cold dry climate for growing crops and cows as well as trees.
Montana farmers today who continue to farm into their old age do it in part because they love the lifestyle and take great pride in it. As Tim Huls told me, “It’s a wonderful lifestyle to get up before dawn and see the sunrise, to watch hawks fly overhead, and to see deer jump through your hay field to avoid your haying equipment.” Jack Hirschy, a rancher whom I met in 1950 when he was 29 years old, is still working on his ranch today at the age of 83, while his father Fred rode a horse on his 91st birthday. But “ranching and farming are hazardous hard work,” in the words of Jack’s rancher sister Jill. Jack suffered internal injuries and broken ribs from a tractor accident at age 77, while Fred was almost killed by a falling tree at age 58. Tim Huls added to his proud comment about the wonderful lifestyle, “Occasionally I get up at 3 A.M. and work until 10 P.M. This isn’t a 9 to 5 job. But none of our children will sign up for being a farmer if it is 3 A.M. to 10 P.M. every day.”
That remark by Tim illustrates one reason for the rise and fall of Montana farming: the lifestyle was highly valued by older generations, but many farmers’ children today have different values. They want jobs that involve sitting indoors in front of computer screens rather than heaving hay bales, and taking off evenings and weekends rather than having to milk cows and harvest hay that don’t take evenings and weekends off. They don’t want a life forcing them to do literally back-breaking physical work into their 80s, as all three surviving Hirschy brothers and sisters are still doing.
Steve Powell explained to me, “People used to expect no more of a farm than to produce enough to feed themselves; today, they want more out of life than just getting fed; they want to earn enough to send their kids to college.” When John Cook was growing up on a farm with his parents, “At dinnertime, my mother was satisfied to go to the orchard and gather asparagus, and as a boy I was satisfied for fun to go hunting and fishing. Now, kids expect fast food and HBO; if their parents don’t provide that, they feel deprived compared to their peers. In my day a young adult expected to be poor for the next 20 years, and only thereafter, if you were lucky, might you hope to end up more comfortably. Now, young adults expect to be comfortable early; a kid’s first questions about a job are ‘What are the pay, the hours, and the vacations?”’ Every Montana farmer whom I know, and who loves being a farmer, is either very concerned whether any of his/her children will want to carry on the family farm, or already knows that none of them will.
Economic considerations now make it difficult for farmers to earn a living at farming, because farm costs have been rising much faster than farm income. The price that a farmer receives for milk and beef today is virtually the same as 20 years ago, but costs of fuel, farm machinery, fertilizers, and other farm necessities are higher. Rick Laible gave me an example: “Fifty years ago, a farmer who wanted to buy a new truck paid for it by selling two cows. Nowadays, a new truck costs around $15,000, but a cow still sells for only $600, so the farmer would have to sell 25 cows to pay for the truck.” That’s the logic underlying the following joke that I was told by a Montana farmer. Question: “What would you do if you were given a million dollars?” Answer: “I love farming, and I would stay here on my money-losing farm until I had used up the million dollars!”
Those shrinking profit margins, and increasing competition, have made the Bitterroot Valley’s hundreds of formerly self-supporting small farms uneconomic. First, the farmers found that they needed additional income from outside jobs to survive, and then they had to give up the farm because it required too much work on evenings and weekends after the outside job. For instance, 60 years ago Kathy Vaughn’s grandparents supported themselves on a 40-acre farm, and so Kathy and Pat Vaughn bought their own 40-acre farm in 1977. With six cows, six sheep, a few pigs, hay, Kathy working as a schoolteacher, and Pat as an irrigation system builder, they fed and raised three children on the farm, but it provided no security or retirement income. After eight years, they sold the farm, moved into town, and all of their children have now left Montana.
Throughout the U.S., small farms are being squeezed out by large farms, the only ones able to survive on shrinking profit margins by economies of scale. But in southwestern Montana it is now impossible for small farmers to become large farmers by buying more land, for reasons succinctly explained by Allen Bjergo: “Agriculture in the U.S. is shifting to areas like Iowa and Nebraska, where no one would live for the fun of it because it isn’t beautiful as in Montana! Here in Montana, people do want to live for the fun of it, and so they are willing to pay much more for land than agriculture on the land would support. The Bitterroot is becoming a horse valley. Horses are economic because, whereas prices for agricultural products depend on the value of the food itself and are not unlimited, many people are willing to spend anything for horses that yield no economic benefit.”
Land prices in the Bitterroot are now 10 or 20 times higher than a few decades ago. At those prices, carrying costs for a mortgage are far higher than could be paid by use of the land as a
farm. That’s the immediate reason why small farmers in the Bitterroot can’t survive by expanding, and why the farms eventually become sold for non-farm use. If old farmers are still living on their farm when they die, their heirs are forced to sell the land to a developer for much more than it would fetch by sale to another farmer, in order to pay the estate taxes on the great increase in land value during the deceased farmer’s lifetime. More often, the farm is sold by the old farmers themselves. Much as they cringe at seeing the land that they have farmed and loved for 60 years subdivided into 5-acre lots of suburban sprawl, the rise in land prices lets them sell even a small formerly self-supporting farm to a developer for a million dollars. They have no other choice to obtain the money necessary to support themselves after retirement, because they have not been able to save money as farmers, and because their children don’t want to continue farming anyway. In Rick Laible’s words, “For a farmer, his land is his only pension fund.”
What accounts for the enormous jump in land prices? Basically, it’s because the Bitterroot’s gorgeous environment attracts wealthy newcomers. The people who buy out old farmers are either those new arrivals themselves, or else land speculators who will subdivide the farm into lots to sell to newcomers or to wealthy people already living in the valley. Almost all of the valley’s recent 4%-per-year population growth represents newcomers moving in from outside the valley, not an excess of births over deaths within the valley. Seasonal recreational tourism is also on the increase, thanks to out-of-staters (like Stan Falkow, Lucy Tompkins, and my sons) visiting to fly-fish, golf, or hunt. As a recent economic analysis commissioned by Ravalli County explains it, “There should be no mystery as to why so many residents are coming to the Bitterroot Valley. Simply put, it is a very attractive place to live with its mountains, forests, streams, wildlife, views and vistas, and relatively mild climate.”