Montana’s new regulations for training dogs on wild birds call for more than enforcing an additional license and season of use.

This year marks the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the most powerful and important bird-protection law ever passed. In honor of this milestone, nature lovers around the world are joining forces to celebrate the Year of the Bird and committing to protect birds for the next hundred years.

A garbled phone call with bad cell service to a Montana FWP non-game biologist got across what we had found. He asked us to try and catch the bird while he got the area’s raptor recovery center on standby to receive it.

Did you know that some iconic western game birds hate trees? A long-time champion of habitat restoration and enhancement, Pheasants Forever is helping pioneer recovery of upland game bird habitat by removing woody shrubs and trees from places they don’t belong. Why? Because good habitat means more game and non-game birds, and better hunting.

“The bottleneck comes in terms of capacity, like dollars and manpower, and long-term commitment to the fight,” Mayer said. “It’s going to take a huge effort from everyone who cares about sagebrush country – the agency leaders, managers, researchers, private landowners, and politicians, even the sportsmen, birders and hikers need to get involved, but we have to act now!”

Imagine a once-booming frontier town bustling with activity. Then, the railroad moved on or the gold seam dried up and only a few lonely residents remained on the dusty streets. A similar scene played out in 2005 at the Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in northern California, except the main residents were a different kind of sagebrush inhabitant: the Greater sage grouse.