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NEWS
Airport Sets Passenger Record in June Direct flight to Calgary being explored as possible addition to local air service
BY DILLON TABISH OF THE BEACON
A record number of people flew out of Glacier Park International Airport last month, according to airport officials.
The airport had 21,280 revenue pas- sengers board in Kalispell in June, over 1,000 passengers more than 2014 and set- ting a new high mark for the month.
GPIA is on pace to break its annual record for departing passengers. Travel is up 2.8 percent compared to the same period last year. There were a total of 227,561 enplaned revenue passengers in 2014.
“The growing consumer demand reflects the appeal of the Flathead Valley and Glacier National Park region,” Air- port Director Cindi Martin stated. “We appreciate our airline partners and their demonstrated faith in the region – adding up-gauged aircraft, increased flight fre- quency and service to/through more hubs.”
July and August are historically the busiest months at the airport.
As travel increases, Kalispell could continue to grow as a regional hub.
Officials with the state’s Department
A private plane takes off from Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell. BEACON FILE PHOTO
of Commerce have contacted members of Glacier AERO — a nonprofit organiza- tion that raises support for additional air- line services — to explore the possibility of adding a direct flight from Kalispell to Calgary, Alberta.
A carrier in Canada expressed inter- est in adding a direct flight to the Flat- head Valley during a recent trade trip with Montana officials.
“It’s an intriguing idea,” Kalispell Chamber of Commerce President Joe Unterreiner said.
The high number of Canadians who
frequent the valley and own second homes here is well documented, but establishing the first direct flight into Canada from Kalispell presents a few challenges. The airport would need to staff a full-time cross-border customs office. Also, the relatively close proxim- ity between Calgary and Kalispell could negate the need for a flight.
The new service would require a min- imum revenue guarantee from Glacier AERO, but the organization has not pre- viously identified it as a priority market.
“We want to listen to what they have to say, but we’ve heard in the past that it’s not economically feasible,” said Paul Johannsen with AERO.
Glacier AERO still considers added service to the Bay Area and Texas as pri- orities, Johannsen said.
GPIA is served by Allegiant, Alaska, Delta and United with year-round ser- vice to Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapo- lis, Salt Lake City and Seattle with addi- tional season service to Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland/San Francisco and Portland.
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Ecosystem Engineers
Study: Beaver-influenced wetlands make for good amphibian habitat
BY CLARE MENZEL OF THE BEACON
Beavers in Glacier National Park mod- ify wetlands in a way that makes them better suited for the health of the park’s amphibian population, according to a study published this month.
The paper, published in the journal Biological Conservation, suggests that even though most amphibian popula- tions are shrinking, the influence of bea- vers on their habitats can decrease the severity of the decline. While the influ- ence isn’t enough to reverse the trend – many amphibians are falling prey to a fungus unrelated to the absence of bea- vers – they can mitigate it.
In 2002, Blake R. Hossack and six other researchers began studying the distribution of amphibians in Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Rocky Mountain national parks. The project was a joint monitoring program with the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service.
For 10 summers, researchers sur- veyed wetlands for evidence of breed- ing in order to determine whether a population of amphibians was present. In Glacier, they studied Boreal toads,
Columbia spotted frogs, and long-toed salamanders. They found that amphibi- ans thrive in beaver-inhabited wetlands, and will move away from wetlands with- out beavers to find one that beavers have modified.
Beavers are a keystone species, which means that other species in their eco- system depend on them so heavily that the ecosystem would change drastically should they disappear. They significantly affect aquatic and riparian habitats by damming streams and creating new open wetlands, which retain more heat from the sun and maintain regular surface water levels through seasonal changes better than most other small wetlands.
The environments beavers create are just the type amphibians need – their larvae depend on heat from external sources to grow and develop. Beaver wetlands are important in seasons like this one, when the snow melts early and might otherwise dry up before the larvae can metamorphose into juveniles.
Beaver wetlands are especially criti- cal in Glacier, where wetlands tend to be shallow, especially on the arid, eastern side of the park.
“I don’t think we would have
amphibians [there] without beavers,” says Hossack.
Enhancing beaver populations might be a viable method for protecting these parks’ amphibian populations. Already, the reintroduction of beavers is being used as a tool in Oregon for the recovery of threatened frogs. For now, though, Hossack doesn’t think beavers are rare enough in Glacier to trigger a mobiliza- tion of management efforts.
More important is future research into population trends. The study con- firmed that the boreal toad population is shrinking. It also revealed that the long- toed salamander is in decline, despite being the most popular toad in the park – a surprise to the researchers.
Another surprising result though, was that the Columbia spotted frogs are doing well. The one exception to the gen- eral trend across all four parks, they saw a population uptick during the study.
“It’s encouraging that at least one spe- cies seems to be stable,” says Hossack. “Future research efforts [will] in part focus on why some species in the region seem to be declining and others are doing OK.”
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JULY 15, 2015 | FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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