“People sometimes forget that our wildlife had pretty much disappeared due to a lack of management,” said Spence Hegstad, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Foundation executive director. “Through management, we've been able to bring them back.” The foundation helped fund a film titled “Back from the Brink - Montana's Wildlife Legacy” about the decline and return of the state's wildlife resources.
Photo courtesy of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
In the early 1800s, the Lewis and Clark and David Thompson expeditions exploring the area now recognized as Montana found a landscape teeming with wildlife.
Less than a century later, the elk, deer, antelope and bison were nearly gone - wiped out by market hunters and the hordes of miners and settlers flooding into the state.
For generations of Montanans, simply finding a deer or elk track caused a stir. Growing up in Lewistown, Bob Green can remember a time when a hunter became an instant celebrity if he was lucky enough to bag a buck on opening day.
“Back then, that was really something,” said Green, who joined Montana's Fish and Game Department in the 1940s and ran the state's game bird farm program for years. “They'd bring it back into town and parade it up and down the main street.”
“When I was in high school, we used to do a lot of hiking in the mountains around Lewistown. It was very seldom that we ever crossed a deer track. ... There were just very few of them in eastern Montana.”
What a difference half a century and some hard work can make.
A new film titled “Back from the Brink - Montana's Wildlife Legacy” traces the decline of the state's wildlife resources and their triumphant return through the efforts of literally thousands of men and women. With any luck, it will soon be coming to a big screen near you.
“The film celebrates the efforts of landowners, sportsmen and agency staff working together in what was truly a magical era,” said Jim Williams, FWP's regional wildlife manager in Kalispell. “They assembled what we have today. It's a gift for us all.”
Many of the photographs and film clips came literally from attics, shoe boxes and garages as retired biologists pored through their memorabilia to help put together the production.
“It was a legacy saved - a lot of this stuff would have been lost without their efforts,” Williams said.
In time, more than 1,000 scanned images of elk captures, turkey releases, antelope trapping and other adventures in bringing back Montana's wildlife populations will be stored on the “Back from the Brink” Web site.
“People anywhere in the world, from Germany to North Dakota, will be able to access these images through the magic of the Internet,” Williams said. “People are going to just eat this up.”
Terry Loner, the retired research biologist turned filmmaker, said people have been talking about doing this project for years.
Harold Picton, a retired Montana State University professor, started the venture by collecting information for a book. His interviews with some of Montana's first biologists came across Loner's desk.
“There were some discussions, and before long we decided it would be neat to do a video as well as a book,” Loner said.
The film tracks the decline of Montana's big game that followed the settlement of the West. Around the turn of the century, conservationists began to organize behind the efforts of men like Theodore Roosevelt.
Montana's first Fish and Game Department was established in 1901. The first resident hunting license was approved in 1905 - the cost: $1 per family. Hunting regulations were strengthened and enforced, game preserves created, farm-raised game birds were planted and a wide array of people began trapping and transplanting big game and fur-bearing animals around the state.
The big break came in 1937 when Congress passed the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, known by most as the Pittman-Robertson Act. Through taxes on sporting arms and ammunition, it provided the state with the funding it needed to truly begin managing wildlife.
“It was the first time that Fish and Game had any money to put into biology,” said Green. “Before that, the Fish and Game was mostly just wardens and hatchery folks.”
By the time Reuel Janson came on board as a regional game manager in 1955, deer populations around Great Falls had rebounded to the point that they were damaging their range.
“We had a dozen special seasons for deer,” said Janson, who is now retired and living in Missoula. “We were doing everything we could to reduce their numbers.”
Wildlife populations took hold during World War II.
“There just wasn't much hunting going on. Most of the men were gone, and those who remained didn't have access to very much ammunition or gas or tires,” said Janson.
Biologists also were taking advantage of new opportunities to do their job better. For instance, Janson remembers when they took to the air to begin monitoring the growing elk herd in the Bitterroot Valley.
“We found that it was the most effective way of doing it,” said Janson. “In the early spring the elk come out on the green side hills and meadows. You could get a good count that way.”
Before the switch to the air, biologists were trying to count elk during the winter months, often without much success.
The film helps preserve that amazing heritage, said Spence Hegstad, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Foundation executive director.
The foundation stepped up to help fund the film, which Hegstad said will eventually find its way into many Montana classrooms.
“People sometimes forget that our wildlife had pretty much disappeared due to a lack of management,” said Hegstad. “Through management, we've been able to bring them back. We're fortunate that we had this opportunity to talk to many of the old-timers before it's too late.”
“This is a history that could have been lost forever,” he said. “It's really our history. It's really what the Fish and Game is all about.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
