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williamettelive.com
Digging Into a Dirty Coal Deal
Ken Olsen
VANESSA BRAIDED HAIR climbs to a knob overlooking the rolling, green prairie of southeastern Montana’s Otter Creek Valley as golden eagles cruise the vast blue skies above and pronghorn browse the lush grass below. Her Northern Cheyenne ancestors took refuge here during the late 1800s after suffering massacres, disease, starvation and forced relocations at the hands of the U.S. government. “This was our oasis,” Braided Hair says of the valley, where Northern Cheyenne still hunt, fish and gather berries and ceremonial plants. She worries that plans to locate a coal mine and associated railroad there “will devastate the Northern Cheyenne way of life.”
The valley is part of the Powder River Basin, a land of pine-topped buttes, sweetgrass valleys and snowmelt streams that encompasses much of southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, an area about the size of West Virginia. A wildlife haven, the basin is home to 250 bird species, including bald eagles and 137 different songbirds.
The Montana portion of the basin also sits atop an estimated 119 billion tons of coal, more than any other state and accounting for nearly 25 percent of all U.S. coal reserves. Nevertheless, Montana produces only about 44 million tons of coal yearly—roughly a tenth of Wyoming’s production. . . .
http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/animals/archives/2014/coal-and-wildlife.aspx
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