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the state Board of Regents approved 2 percent pay raises for many university system coaches and administrators, including Engstrom.
MISSOULA
4. Montana Supreme Court to Hold
Hearing on Krakauer Lawsuit
The Montana Supreme Court will hear arguments April 27 on author Jon Krakauer’s lawsuit to obtain the disci- plinary records of a former University of Montana quarterback accused of rape.
Krakauer, author of “Into the Wild,” contends the records must be released in order for the public to understand what the college is doing to protect students from sexual assault.
State attorneys for the Montana Com- missioner of Higher Education, Clay- ton Christian, argue that releasing edu- cational records pertaining to Jordan Johnson without consent could threaten Montana’s federal education funding.
Johnson, who graduated last year, was accused of raping a female student in 2012. He was acquitted in state court.
Before the acquittal, a university court had recommended expulsion of an unnamed student — later identi ed as Johnson — after concluding the rape had occurred. However, the student was never expelled.
The Missoulian reports that Krakauer argues the public has the right to know the reason Johnson wasn’t expelled from UM. A court document said UM Presi- dent Royce Engstrom agreed that a stu- dent accused of rape in 2012 – at the same time, and with identical facts, as the case against Johnson – should be expelled from UM.
And UM’s student-athlete code of conduct states players must expect more scrutiny by the media and public than other students, according to another brief.
Krakauer argues Johnson gave up his expectation of privacy when he agreed to the code.
MISSOULA
5. Wolf Management Reaching New
Levels of Success in Region
come back – when they were still feder- ally protected – the goal was get them recovered and o the endangered spe- cies list,” Bradley told the Missoulian. “Sometimes those removals were con- servative – one here and one there, to see if that would work. What we found was those small removals weren’t e ective.”
In a cursory view, Bradley’s results seem obvious: Remove a wolf pack, remove a livestock problem.
“What’s counterintuitive is you end up killing fewer wolves in the long run that way,” Bradley explained. “Maybe you have an incident and you kill a pack of six. That’s di erent than if you take three out every year, and the remainder have pups every year, and you end up taking 12 or 15 wolves over ve or six years. If you removed that pack up front, you only take ve or six, and give a chance for another (non-depredating) pack to move in.”
BUTTE
6. School Receives Bomb Threat
Following Threats to Courthouses
The FBI and the Department of Home- land Security are investigating after several courthouses and a high school in Montana received phoned-in bomb threats.
Butte High School was evacuated shortly before 10 a.m. Jan. 19. Prin- cipal John Metz told The Montana Standard the voice on the call was computer-generated.
The Butte-Silver Bow County Court- house received its third threat in as many workdays on the morning of Jan. 19.
On Jan. 14, the Lewis and Clark County courthouse and the Montana Supreme Court also received bomb threats. No bombs were found in any location.
Federal agents also are investigating bomb threats made with a computer-gen- erated voice to dozens of schools in the northeastern part of the United States.
Butte-Silver Bow Undersheri George Skuletich said the two Butte calls on Jan. 19 came from the same “spoof” number, but he did not know if they were related to the threats in other states.
BILLINGS
7. Montana O cials Object to Limits
on Mining Because of Bird
Montana’s governor and attorney gen- eral objected last week to a federal pro- posal to withdraw almost a million acres of public land in the state from future mining to protect greater sage grouse.
Gov. Steve Bullock and Attorney Gen- eral Tim Fox said in separate statements that the mining restrictions were not needed.
Fox called for the withdrawals to be canceled, while Bullock said the state would be able to conserve sage grouse even with mining on some of the land.
The U.S. Interior Department in Sep- tember proposed the mining restrictions a ecting almost 10 million acres in Mon- tana, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah and Oregon. The move was intended to pre- vent disturbances to the chicken-sized bird’s habitat and help keep it o the endangered species list.
The Club’s
Private Reserve Cut Angus
Aggressively dealing with wolves that kill livestock works better than a grad- ual approach, according to research in Montana.
“Killing livestock is a learned behav- ior,” Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Liz Bradley said. “You might have a pack in an area for several years and not have a problem, and then, boom, you have a livestock kill, and then it hap- pens again and again and again. There are many variables, but if you decide remov- ing wolves is the best option, you’re bet- ter to take more earlier than picking away at them.”
Ten years of data and study on wolves has helped wolf managers improve their tools for protecting cattle and sheep. Livestock deaths have shown a steady decline in the past several years.
Gray wolves were reintroduced in the Yellowstone National Park region in the mid-1990s.
“When wolves were just starting to
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