Mountain Journal

Mountain Journal Mountain Journal is a nonprofit digital magazine covering the wildlife and wild lands of Greater Yellowstone and the Mountain West. Help us make impact.

Mountain Journal (find us at mountainjournal.org) is the first public-interest journalism site devoted to comprehensively exploring the relationship between people and nature in Greater Yellowstone—America's last, best and most iconic wild ecosystem. What happens here with wildlife and public lands has implications for the American West, every corner of the country, and the rest of the world. Plea

se tell your friends about us and ask them to tell 10 of their friends and so on. We are free but we rely upon your support to keep us viable when so much of America's natural heritage is at stake. Because we are set up as a nonprofit 501(c)(3), your contributions are tax-deductible. Thank you.

Happy Holidays, dear friends of Mountain Journal. What a year it has been!Wolves may be pack animals, but they stand alo...
12/28/2025

Happy Holidays, dear friends of Mountain Journal. What a year it has been!

Wolves may be pack animals, but they stand alone in Mountain Journal reader interest. Wolf-specific stories made up eight of the top 50 most-read stories we published in 2025. They ranged from the national outrage over a Wyoming wolf torture incident to one of MoJo’s most ambitious explorations of fate of wolves who wander beyond Yellowstone National Park’s boundaries. Stories of specific wolves, like Junction Butte matriarch 907F’s final fight with a rival pack, drew concentrated interest. So did revelations of wolf behavior, such as the camera-trap revelations showing how wolf packs adjust to migrating elk herds.

In government chambers, the wolf was a regular newsmaker, both in Endangered Species Act rulings and state hunting debates. Many of those confrontations revolved around persistent myths and misconceptions, prompting longtime wolf biologist Ed Bangs to remark on the common presumption that agencies must manage wolves as aggressively as possible “There is actually a fairy tale about inventing a wolf crisis to get attention,” Bangs said. “It’s the old white knight and dragon [or] rugged lone cowboy fable made modern. It’s all really about thinking you can kill a wolf and be praised by society, or at least get some extra votes.”

Read all our wolf coverage here: https://bit.ly/4b5EOnh

Photo above: A black wolf moves through sage, Yellowstone National Park, Fall 2025.
Credit: Ben Bluhm

Happy Holidays, dear friends of Mountain Journal. What a year it has been!In 2025, we published articles on topics rangi...
12/27/2025

Happy Holidays, dear friends of Mountain Journal. What a year it has been!

In 2025, we published articles on topics ranging from wildlife migration to chronic wasting disease. We dug into federal layoffs, grizzly bears, wolverines and wolves, and reported on the latest developments in the Endangered Species Act and the Roadless Rule.

Before we move on to next year, let’s dig in further to some of MoJo’s weightiest and most discussed coverage from 2025.

Swipe to view more of our coverage of the federal government shutdown and read more of Mountain Journal's reporting here: https://bit.ly/4b5EOnh

Photo above: The Roosevelt Arch, North Entrance, Yellowstone National Park.
Credit: National Park Conservation Association

A new study compares tolerance for wolves versus tolerance for hunting them. Its survey answers might surprise you.Publi...
12/24/2025

A new study compares tolerance for wolves versus tolerance for hunting them. Its survey answers might surprise you.

Published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, the study compared a 2023 wolf-tolerance survey to results from the same questions asked in 2012 and 2017, reaching a total of 7,607 Montanans over that decade.

“The surveys show overwhelming positive trends and declining negative trends,” co-author Alexander Metcalf told Mountain Journal.

Read the full story by Rob Chaney here: https://bit.ly/3NekXsa

Photo by Ben Bluhm Wildlife

From Montana FWP:Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staff confirmed a grizzly bear sighting in the Bangtail Range east of ...
12/23/2025

From Montana FWP:

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staff confirmed a grizzly bear sighting in the Bangtail Range east of Bozeman this month.

FWP grizzly bear specialists confirmed the sighting after a trail camera captured images of a single subadult grizzly bear on national forest land. This is the first time a grizzly bear has been formally documented in the Bangtails since grizzly bear recovery efforts began. The sighting is not far from areas with previously documented grizzly bear presence, including a grizzly bear of similar size that was seen traveling along the Yellowstone River in Livingston this fall, as well as one observed in the Shields Valley in 2023.

The grizzly bear populations continue to become denser and more widespread in Montana, increasing the likelihood that residents and recreationists will encounter them in more places each year. People should be prepared to encounter grizzly bears anywhere in the western two-thirds of the state.

Photo courtesy FWP

It has been five years since Mountain Journal columnist Susan Marsh's husband was life-flighted to a regional hospital w...
12/22/2025

It has been five years since Mountain Journal columnist Susan Marsh's husband was life-flighted to a regional hospital with a spinal infection. In the wake of his passing, the winter solstice has come to represent a season of the gifts she is grateful for.

In her latest column, Marsh reflects on life, death and gratitude, and the poetry that saw her through grief.

Read Marsh's column here: https://bit.ly/4scf5jd
Photo by Joseph T. O'Connor / MoJo

PHOTO OF THE WEEKWe’re asking Mountain Journal readers to share their Greater Yellowstone photos and videos, and have re...
12/20/2025

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

We’re asking Mountain Journal readers to share their Greater Yellowstone photos and videos, and have received some powerful submissions. Each Friday, we’ll feature our Editor’s Pick for Photo of the Week.

Christmas is around the corner. Thanks to Becky Ruane for submitting a holiday stunner (though this photo was from early summer June 2025): "Along the Blacktail road in Yellowstone, there were three baby black bears in a tree," Ruane writes. "This one is pretending he is the ornament on a Christmas tree."

Submit your photo or video from Greater Yellowstone here: https://bit.ly/48QnC40

In our ongoing series, Mountain Journal is highlighting good work in Greater Yellowstone. As the climate changes the fac...
12/19/2025

In our ongoing series, Mountain Journal is highlighting good work in Greater Yellowstone. As the climate changes the face of the landscape, these people are changing our approach to it. Through interviews and imagery, these are your “Faces of Climate.”

In this installment, biochemist Jesse Therien discusses why he believes lasting climate solutions begin with careful, hands-on work. And that the future may lie in renewable biofuels.

Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3NbgnLe
Photo by YTCC

NEWS DISPATCH: "Rush to Avoid Red Tape Derails Logging Project Near Yellowstone"Cutting red tape and streamlining projec...
12/18/2025

NEWS DISPATCH: "Rush to Avoid Red Tape Derails Logging Project Near Yellowstone"

Cutting red tape and streamlining project work have been marching orders for the U.S. Forest Service throughout the first year of the second Trump administration. Last week, a federal court ruling on a Greater Yellowstone logging project showed how far those directives can backfire.

A U.S. District Court judge slammed the South Plateau Landscape Area Treatment Project in the Custer Gallatin National Forest near Yellowstone for shortcuts that “eviscerate secure habitat” for grizzlies, lynx and elk.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/48KgaXY

INTERVIEW: “Patagonia and the Flies that Might Save the World”The new book by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Blue Rib...
12/15/2025

INTERVIEW: “Patagonia and the Flies that Might Save the World”

The new book by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Blue Ribbon Flies founder Craig Mathews and European master fisherman Mauro Mazzo, "Pheasant Tail Simplicity," shows anglers how simplifying their hobby can improve the environment.

The book provides step-by-step photographic instructions for tying flies. But beyond the how-to, it contemplates the why-to of fishing.

The authors warn that the book is “not intended for the beginner fly angler nor for the gear ju**ie who believes the secret to success lies in buying ever more equipment and flies … It’s for the person who knows that restricting your options forces you to be creative.” And as Chouinard puts it, their advice is not so much an alternative approach as a course correction to a pastime at risk of swamping itself.

Read the story here: https://bit.ly/48Qq8Ww
Photo by Rich Crowder

We’re asking Mountain Journal readers to share their Greater Yellowstone photos and videos, and have received some power...
12/12/2025

We’re asking Mountain Journal readers to share their Greater Yellowstone photos and videos, and have received some powerful submissions. Each Friday, we’ll feature our Editor’s Pick for Photo of the Week.

Thanks to Janay for this week’s selected submission. We'll choose many types of images and videos, but as a journalistic outlet, we want the images to have meaning and tell a story; these aren't just pretty pictures.

“I wanted to remind readers of MoJo that it’s not just about building, recreating, fragmenting, and paving the GYE that needs our attention but also how we move in the landscape, specifically in motor vehicles," Brun writes.

"This muley family lost their lives migrating to their winter habitat. This picture was taken on the North Fork highway - gateway to Yellowstone’s east entrance. Locals and tourists alike speed up and down this highway leaving too many dead animals in the road or along its embankments further endangering the lives of the scavengers that will clean up the tragedy.

“I hope this picture reminds motorists to slow down and that each animal killed was a part of a family and broader community too.”

Submit your photo or video from Greater Yellowstone here: https://bit.ly/474vE8m

Following years of rapid growth and a warming climate, Bozeman plans to update it’s Integrated Water Resources Plan to g...
12/12/2025

Following years of rapid growth and a warming climate, Bozeman plans to update it’s Integrated Water Resources Plan to guide management over the next 50 years.

Located in the drought-prone Lower Gallatin Watershed, Bozeman has a finite water supply primarily sourced from winter’s snowpack. “We’ve got a water supply system in the Gallatin that’s having supply-side challenges,” Clayton Elliott, IWRP Water Advisory Committee member, told Mountain Journal.

“Climate change is leading to lower yields of water in our river systems, less water and more frequent droughts, and changing the nature and timing of that water flow — early runoff, later rain in the winter months and we’re not building snowpack in the way that we’re used to.”

Read more here: https://bit.ly/3MUWoAm

Photo by David Tucker

Thirteen young Montanans who successfully challenged the legality of the state’s climate policies in 2023 are now asking...
12/11/2025

Thirteen young Montanans who successfully challenged the legality of the state’s climate policies in 2023 are now asking the Montana Supreme Court to weigh in. The issue at hand: state lawmakers passed several bills earlier this year in response to that victory, which blocked a law barring the state from considering climate in permitting decisions.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday, Rikki Held and a dozen co-plaintiffs from the earlier lawsuit argue that three bills passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year don’t comply with the state Supreme Court’s December 2024 order. The bills the plaintiffs are challenging revise sections of the Montana Environmental Policy Act and the Montana Clean Air Act dealing with greenhouse gases and the state’s regulatory review process.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/4iP2RZC

Address

Bozeman, MT
59715

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Mountain Journal posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Mountain Journal:

Shortcuts

Share

Category