Cates-Carney: And were the tribes a part of the negotiations to wrap the bison range into the water compact settlement?

Adams: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The tribe was very much involved. In fact, the negotiation primarily was between Senator Daines and the tribe. This compact process in the federal settlement, these are things that have been happening for years and years and years, both at the state and the federal level. This wasn’t something that was just arrived at overnight. By the time it became a proposal for legislation, there had been a tremendous amount of negotiation between the Department of Interior, the state DNRC, the tribes, etc. And so we’re now at a point where it’s passed at the state level. It’s now being introduced at the federal level. And this should be, we should be seeing the end of the last Montana Indian Water Rights Compact here in the next year.

There’s nothing like the feeling of sweet relief after walking into an air-conditioned room in the middle of a heatwave. Mountain goats, an iconic species that thrives in alpine habitats such as Montana’s Glacier National Park, feel the same way on hot summer days, only they cool off using glaciers and snow patches instead of AC units or central air.

Unfortunately, glaciers and snow patches are rapidly declining around the world, due to human-driven climate change. The loss of these important environments is increasing the odds of heat stress and hyperthermia in mountain goats, according to a study published on Wednesday in PLOS One.

“Mountain goats need cooling,” said study co-author Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor in wildlife biology at Colorado State University, in a call. “They just don’t seem to have the thermal flexibility that we see in some of these other large mammals.”

While scientists have been aware of the vulnerability of goats to climate change for years, there hasn’t been much observational research about the specific benefits of their snowy havens to their overall health. Berger and his colleagues aimed to fill this gap with their study, which is based on GPS satellite tracking of collared mountain goats in Glacier National Park, as well as onsite observations of the animals during the summers of 2013 to 2016.

The vast majority of staffers at the Bureau of Land Management’s Washington, D.C., headquarters do not intend to move out West as part of a planned reorganization, according to multiple sources.

As many as 80% of the 159 BLM staffers in D.C. who are being moved to the new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., or to other state offices from Alaska to Arizona, plan to reject the reassignment orders and either retire or find another job at the Interior Department or other agency in Washington, the sources told E&E News.

BLM handed out formal relocation notices to almost all of the 159 employees on Nov. 12, giving them 30 days to decide whether to move to the bureau’s new headquarters and other state offices.

That means the 30-day deadline for most ends today.