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Michael Goguen, a venture capitalist and philanthropist who has a home in Whitefish, will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Montana High Tech Jobs Summit in Bozeman. Goguen will be a featured speaker at the summit co-sponsored by Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines. The event is Sept. 13-14 at Montana State University. Goguen is slated to speak on Sept. 14 along with Doug Burgum, a co-founder and general partner at Arthur Ventures. This will be the first biannual high tech summit and is following in the footsteps of former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus’s Montana’s Jobs Summit. The event aims

With the deadline looming for one of Montana’s most instrumental federal funding tools, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines and Gov. Steve Bullock say reauthorizing the measure is vital to maintaining the region’s public lands. On Sept. 30, the half-century old Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) will expire unless Congress votes to reauthorize a program that has provided $16 billion for conservation projects, including about $500 million in Montana, making the money available for matching grants to buy fish and wildlife habitat and increase access for recreation like hunting and fishing. Both Tester and Daines have voiced strong

WEST GLACIER – Although Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines reside on opposite sides of the aisle, both agree something must be done to rein in the skyrocketing cost of suppressing wildfires. On Aug. 23, Montana’s senators were in West Glacier for a briefing on the Sheep Fire, which has burned more than 500 acres on the southern edge of Glacier National Park and threatens the community of Essex. The visit came just weeks after they joined other western senators in sponsoring legislation that would reform how the U.S. Forest Service funds the battle against wildfires. A new report from

BLANKENSHIP BRIDGE – It didn’t matter that a noxious veil of smoke blotted out the peak-studded horizon on Aug. 24 because everyone who converged here was focused on the crystal-clear, coruscating waters of the North Fork Flathead River, which forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park. A coalition of unlikely bedfellows gathered on the banks of the North Fork, just north of Columbia Falls, to commemorate a historic measure to protect the sparkling river that rolled beside them. Energy executives mingled among fish biologists, while land managers, business champions, community boosters, tree huggers, and tree cutters all milled about

The sun beat down on the Madison Valley as U.S. Sen. Steve Daines sat smiling in a lawn chair holding a 97-day-old trumpeter swan — one of five that would be released into the restored wetlands of O’Dell Creek. “They’re magnificent animals,” Daines said, shortly before riding an all-terrain vehicle to a pond where the swan would be released. The Senate is on recess, so the Republican is back in town. On Tuesday, he went to Ennis and visited the Granger Ranches near O’Dell Creek, the site of a major wetlands restoration project over the last decade. Releasing swans there

BLANKENSHIP BRIDGE – “Thank you’s” may have flowed even more easily than the relatively low North Fork of the Flathead River on Monday morning, as the National Parks Conservation Association celebrated the North Fork Watershed Protection Act on rocks that form the river’s bed at higher water. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., hailed the legislation as “an incredible bipartisan agreement” that “makes sure Flathead Lake will be Flathead Lake for generations to come.” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said it was “ultimately, a means to an end, to protect a way of life.” That Tester and Daines aren’t often found on