BILLINGS, Mont. - An unlikely pairing of conservation and industrial interests in Montana is celebrating two decades of cooperation today.

In these divisive times, it could serve as a model for bringing more folks together. The Good Neighbor Agreement was signed on May 8, 2000, between the Stillwater Mining Company and three community organizations in south-central Montana to protect local waterways and quality of life.

Paul Hawks is a rancher and member of the Cottonwood Resource Council, and was part of the original agreement. He says they first set up an oversight committee with two votes on each side, and that kept both sides at the table.

"We began to understand each other and develop a relationship," says Hawks. "So we have personal relationships as well as business relationships with these people, so that's what develops the trust, and so I think that's what's served us over these last 20 years."

The agreement also includes the Stillwater Protective Association and Northern Plains Resource Council, a conservation and family agriculture group in Montana. The mine owner is now called Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company.

Before the agreement was signed, local residents sued the state to keep the waters of the Boulder and Stillwater rivers clean from the proposed mine. Hawks says the rivers are world-class fisheries and locals wanted them to stay that way.

He says the lawsuit was a three-year court battle that went nowhere. When the mining company decided to go ahead with their project, locals decided to send a letter to the company asking them to sit down and talk through their concerns.

Hawks says the company agreed.

"You know, when you get involved in a lawsuit, you lose time and it's a lot of money spent on both sides that often don't get you where you want to go," says Hawks. "So this process actually brings you to a table, keeps you at the table to discuss things."

The Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company has continued expanding its operations even as water-quality protections have improved. Hawks says the agreement has evolved, too, with the two sides putting greater focus on groundwater protections in recent years.

He believes the Good Neighbor Agreement is a working model for cooperation between industry and local communities.

"You need to have an organized group of people who are willing to put the time and dedication into it, as we have for 20 years, to be at the other side of the table to help work through the issues," says Hawks. "So it's a major commitment."


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The Trump administration's long-term plan for artificial intelligence could have far-reaching environmental impacts across the country.

His strategy calls for the removal of land use rules considered prohibitive to the construction of AI data centers. Last year, then Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Microsoft would invest $1 billion to establish a new AI data center in Laporte to generate cloud computing infrastructure.

Ben Murray, senior researcher for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said fossil fuel plants are already being reopened to help meet high energy demands.

"We just need to be aware that anything that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuel is going to increase the problems that we're seeing from the climate crisis," Murray explained.

Murray argued high-tech progress should not come at the expense of increased household energy prices. Residents' support is low due to concerns about increased traffic and noise near the centers. The Trump administration said environmental and permitting regulations will only slow America's dominance in the AI field.

A report last year found emissions from data centers owned by Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft were more than seven times higher than officially reported. Computer servers using AI require far more energy than those without. A ChatGPT query, for example, can use up to 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.

"These companies can seem as if they're decreasing their emissions and meeting net-zero goals but in reality, the emissions are amping up faster than ever for these companies," Murray pointed out.

Murray noted the push for more data centers is already leading Big Tech companies to backtrack on their climate goals. It is possible to power AI services with renewable energy sources, he added, but doing so requires political will.

As of June 2025, a 1,200-acre corn and soybean field just outside of New Carlisle has turned into eight Amazon-led AI energy centers. The tech giant plans to construct a total of 30 at the site.


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After one year, Washington's first comprehensive bee survey has documented 15 species that have never been collected in the state before.

The project is cataloguing native bees, which includes nearly all species in the state, but excludes honeybees.

Karla Salp is a communications consultant with the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Washington Bee Atlas program, which conducted the survey.

She said the data will serve as a baseline to track bee populations.

"The reason why this is happening in the first place is to answer the question, how are pollinators doing in Washington state?" said Salp. "And the answer is we don't know, because we've never actually looked at even what bees we have throughout the state."

Salp said the project also involves compiling a list of plants that each bee species pollinates so residents can make their yards more attractive to these beneficial insects.

As honeybee numbers continue to decline rapidly, Salp explained that native pollinators may become more important to Washington's agriculture.

"Knowing what native pollinators we have and how we can support them is really a sustainability issue" said Salp, "to make sure that whether we have honeybees here or not, there are options for pollination."

Volunteers collected over 17,000 bees on more than 600 different host plants.

Salp said the process of identifying them is slow because each one must be viewed under a microscope, and there is still considerable work to be done.

"We're expecting to find a lot more species" said Salp, "that are either rare or even new to the state. "

If people are interested in volunteering, an online application for the Bee Atlas program is available on the Washington State Department of Agriculture website.




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The Trump administration wants to overturn a conservation rule that had garnered more public comment than any in U.S. history up until that time.

Commonly known as the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.

Sarah McMillan - the senior attorney and director of the Wildlands & Wildlife Program at the Western Environmental Law Center - said before it was adopted in 2001, 1.5 million people submitted comments, with the vast majority in support of the rule.

"This was a rule that was carefully, thoughtfully developed," said McMillan. "There was a long process of inventorying these roadless areas and identifying these remote, often mature and old-growth trees. This didn't happen overnight."

A rollback of the rule would allow more logging and drilling on federal lands, which McMillan said would worsen climate change, harm wildlife & vital ecosystems, jeopardize water quality, and negatively affect recreational opportunities.

The Bush administration attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule in 2005, but lost in the courts.

In announcing the proposed rollback, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed more logging would improve forest management, which would in turn decrease forest fires.

But McMillan said that argument is disputed in a 2020 Wilderness Society study that found just the opposite.

"The truth is, un-roaded areas burn at a significantly lower rate than areas with roads," said McMillan. "So, fires start near roads."

McMillan said it doesn't make sense to allow private developers to log more trees when the planet is undergoing a biodiversity and climate crisis - especially because old-growth trees create a buffer against climate change.

Forests cover almost 30% of New Mexico's land area.




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