Montana

Montana delegation backs bill to release wilderness study areas

Published

2 months ago

December 18, 2025

Montana delegation backs bill to release wilderness study areas

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) Most of Montana’s Congressional delegation is once again sponsoring a bill to remove three study areas from consideration as designated wilderness.

On Wednesday, Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Rep. Troy Downing reintroduced Daines’ “Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act,” which would remove three wilderness study areas from wilderness consideration, releasing them to be managed as regular federal land. Rep. Ryan Zinke was not listed as a sponsor.

Two areas – the 11,580-acre Wales Creek and the 11,380-acre Hoodoo wilderness study areas managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management – are 40 to 50 miles east of Missoula in the Garnet Range north of Interstate 90. The third area, the much larger Middle Fork Judith wilderness study area, is around 81,000 acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the Little Belt Mountains southeast of Great Falls.

Daines previously introduced the Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act in 2023, but it was never heard in committee. Now, he’s bringing it forward again, and he explained his strangely titled bill in a press release Wednesday.

“As a lifelong sportsman, increasing access to Montana’s great outdoors is one of my top priorities. The ‘Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act’ promotes our outdoor way of life by returning restrictive WSA’s to general public land management, which will improve wildlife habitat restoration, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and unlock better access to public land,” Daines said in the release.

It should be noted that neither hunting nor fishing are prohibited in wilderness study areas. In the past, sportsmen’s organizations have opposed the wholesale elimination of wilderness study areas. However, some have indicated they are considering the Wales Creek and Hoodoo areas could serve as political sacrifices to save other areas.

The wildfire risk in the Hoodoo area was significantly reduced this summer after the Windy Rock Fire burned a majority of the area.

Daines first proposed a similar bill – the Protect Public Use of Public Lands Act – in 2018 to release five Forest Service wilderness study areas, including the Middle Fork Judith. Former Rep. Greg Gianforte joined him but increased the number of wilderness study areas on the chopping block to 29, including those under BLM management. Both politicians had based their legislation off feedback from a select group of conservative counties and user groups, including the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Montana Snowmobile Association. Other organizations protested the bills and the lack of transparency during the process.

This most recent bill is supported by the Montana Logging Association, Montana Snowmobiles Association, Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, Montana Farm Bureau Federation, Great Falls Bicycle Club and the Judith Basin and Powell county commissioners.

In 1976, the BLM established 38 wilderness study areas in Montana, including the Wales Creek and Hoodoo areas. In 1977, the Montana Wilderness Study Act set nine Forest Service study areas aside for wilderness consideration, including the Middle Fork Judith. Federal evaluations of the areas conducted during the 1980s concluded some areas, including the three being considered in the bill, weren’t suitable for wilderness designation.

This year’s bill cites the 2020 BLM Missoula Office Resource Management Plan as justification for eliminating the Wales Creek and Hoodoo wilderness study areas. The plan said the two areas were unsuitable for wilderness designation.

However, the plan was not developed during “a 5-year collaborative process,” as the bill claims, but under the direction of the first Trump administration, which ignored a lot of public comments made during scoping. The three resource management plans for Missoula, Lewistown and Miles City were scheduled to be released to the public in late 2018, but they were delayed when the three offices were required to send the drafts to Washington, D.C., for review and revision. When they were returned and published in May 2019, all three draft plans heavily emphasized natural resources extraction.

A Pew Charitable Trust review of six BLM resource management plans drafted in 2019 found all “would fail to conserve lands that the agency’s own research has deemed worthy of protection; cut decades-old safeguards; minimally protect a fraction of 1% of the areas found to contain wilderness characteristics; and open vast swaths of public lands to energy and mineral development.”

Several Montana conservation organizations protested the Montana plans, including Wild Montana and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. When the draft plans were finalized in early 2020, some changes had been made to cater to sportsmen, but resource extraction still dominated. The Missoula Office’s new objective was to “produce the greatest quantities of forest products from vegetation restoration activities.”

The 2020 plans created a new designation – backcountry conservation area – that allows resource extraction but prioritizes the long-term maintenance of big game populations for hunting. The Missoula plan proposes to manage its three wilderness study areas as wilderness unless Congress releases them. Then, if Daines’ bill passes, portions of the wilderness study areas would become backcountry conservation areas: a 6,100-acre Hoodoos BCA and a 2,365-acre Wales BCA, according to the plan. The remainder of each area is open to any and all uses.

During the 2025 Legislature, the Senate Energy, Technology, and Federal Relations Committee voted 9-4 against a resolution calling on Congress to remove protection from Montana’s wilderness study areas. More than 3,300 Montanans signed a petition opposing the bill and supporting local solutions for study area management.

Some anticipate that more roads will invade wilderness study areas once they’re no longer protected. Zach Angstead, Wild Montana federal policy director, said Daines has countered those claims by saying the areas will still be protected under the Roadless Rule. But now, the Trump administration is on the verge of repealing the Roadless Rule, so that level of protection could disappear. And Daines strongly supports repeal of the Roadless Rule, according to a Dec. 5 email from a Daines spokesperson to the Flathead Beacon.

“Sen. Daines’ push to remove (wilderness study area) protections and roll back the Roadless Rule show that this isn’t about better local management – it’s about opening Montana’s public lands up to large-scale development to benefit corporations, not Montanans,” Angstead said in a statement. “Managing (wilderness study areas) properly requires local collaborative solutions developed by the people who know these places best. The people and the legislature have made it clear that Daines needs to give up this unpopular crusade to undermine and dismantle public lands and start taking his cues from real people who have been working to shape the future of (wilderness study areas).”

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.

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Montana Lottery Big Sky Bonus results for Feb. 22, 2026

Published

6 hours ago

February 23, 2026

Press Room

The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at Feb. 22, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from Feb. 22 drawing

04-05-17-30, Bonus: 04

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

Winning lottery numbers are sponsored by Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network.

Where can you buy lottery tickets?

Tickets can be purchased in person at gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores. Some airport terminals may also sell lottery tickets.

You can also order tickets online through Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network, in these U.S. states and territories: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., and West Virginia. The Jackpocket app allows you to pick your lottery game and numbers, place your order, see your ticket and collect your winnings all using your phone or home computer.

Jackpocket is the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network. Gannett may earn revenue for audience referrals to Jackpocket services. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). 18+ (19+ in NE, 21+ in AZ). Physically present where Jackpocket operates. Jackpocket is not affiliated with any State Lottery. Eligibility Restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Terms: jackpocket.com/tos.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.

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The American-made hemp shirt experiment

Published

18 hours ago

February 22, 2026

Press Room

By MATT HUDSON, Montana Free Press

In 2020, a northcentral Montana hemp crop was harvested, beginning a trial run by two Montana companies to produce clothing without the material ever leaving the United States.

When the shirt finally went to market last year, it was proof of a concept that had long since moved overseas.

Hemp is often held up as a versatile crop with all sorts of applications: fabrics, home insulation, even edible seed oils, to name a few. But it was illegal to grow or distribute hemp in the U.S. for nearly a century until 2018 when Congress lifted federal restrictions on the marijuana-adjacent plant. So, when a Fort Benton hemp processor and a Great Falls-based apparel company sought to make a line of U.S.-made hemp shirts, they had to scrap together a supply chain to make it happen.

“Honestly, it was just: Can we do it? Because it hadn’t happened in, arguably, 100 years,” Morgan Tweet, co-founder and CEO of IND Hemp, told Montana Free Press. “No one had grown (hemp) fiber and been able to process it to a quality that they were able to spin with in the U.S.”

IND Hemp was formed in 2018 and started producing hemp seed oils from regionally grown crops for various food applications. But hemp-based textiles, known for their sturdiness, were on the company’s radar, and after two years of planning, IND started up its fiber production line in 2022.

It was around that time that Great Falls-based apparel company Smith and Rogue approached IND with a proposal. The brand is an offshoot of the North 40 Outfitters chain of farm and outdoors supply stores, which is also based in Great Falls and has 12 stores across the northwestern United States.

Smith and Rogue already had hemp-based clothing lines, but those were produced internationally. Brandon Kishpaugh, apparel merchandiser at Smith and Rogue, was interested in the possibility of a clothing line that didn’t leave American borders.

“We saw there was a demand for a more durable, more sustainable, higher quality fiber,” Kishpaugh said. “And now it’s how do we get it sourced in the U.S.?”

It was a stroke of luck that a hemp fiber processor opened up less than an hour away in Fort Benton. But that was just one early step in a long manufacturing chain.

FROM PROHIBITION TO PRODUCTION

Despite being illegal for much of the 20th century, hemp is intertwined with American history. Grown by founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, it was seen not only as a reliable crop but also a source of domestic pride amid boycotts of British goods during the American Revolution.

Hemp fiber ready to be shipped to the Carolinas where it will be made into fabric is seen in the at the warehouse Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Fort Benton, Mont. (Lauren Miller/Montana Free Press via AP)

Hemp is a sibling of marijuana, although modern hemp has tiny levels of the psychoactive chemical that’s sought in the recreational drug. But the two were the same in the eyes of Congress, which passed a prohibitive tax in 1937 that outlawed both plants. Aside from a brief U.S. government push for hemp-based rope, parachutes and water hoses during World War II, industrial hemp production shuttered in America for the rest of the century.

The Montana Legislature legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp in 2001, but it didn’t spark a green rush. It wasn’t until 2009 that the state issued its first industrial hemp license to a Bozeman medical marijuana business.

Like medical marijuana, hemp remained federally prohibited and languished in jurisdictional purgatory. Montana’s hemp licenses included language that warned about the plant being federally illegal, and the DEA declined at first to recognize Montana’s industrial hemp law. Another licensed hemp farmer near Helena saw her crops die in 2017 because she couldn’t get access to federally controlled water.

Congress relaxed its stance in 2018 and lifted the restrictions on industrial hemp through that year’s farm bill, and Montana farmers harvested 2,400 acres of hemp in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That makes Montana a middling state for hemp production, beaten out by larger producers such as South Dakota, Texas and California.

The prohibition is gone ( at least for now ), but over the preceding decades, the institutional knowledge around hemp production largely disappeared in the United States. In addition, American textile manufacturing of all kinds witnessed precipitous declines around the turn of the century.

Sofi Thanhauser, author of the book “Worn: A People’s History of Clothing,” told MTFP that prolonged prohibition made it difficult for hemp to return to American clothing manufacturing. What was left of the industry centered mostly on cotton. Hemp was more like a niche material, sometimes more difficult to process, and U.S. companies weren’t equipped to handle it.

“Over time, that infrastructure has disappeared,” Thanhauser said. “And so it’s really hard for companies who want to do supply chains in the U.S., because a lot of the time the equipment and expertise is not here.”

IND’s main fiber-processing equipment was manufactured in France, where a stable European hemp industry has existed. The Fort Benton plant is dedicated to a process called decortication, which separates the outer fiber material, called bast, from the hemp straw’s woody core, called hurd. The machines are massive and can process five tons per hour.

After hemp cultivation became federally legal in 2018, Tweet said lots of people started growing the plant. Few were getting into fiber processing.

“We are still always optimizing our line,” Tweet said. “But there’s not a playbook. You can’t really call up a company and say, ‘We want to make hemp fiber for T-shirts’ and they say, ‘I’ve got you covered.’”

THE SHIRT

Smith and Rogue’s test run for an American-manufactured line of clothing was limited — initially, 239 men’s work shirts. Kishpaugh said he focused on a shirt for this experimental run because it was something his New York sewing contractors could work with.

“I wanted to go with something very heritage, very workwear,” he said. “I knew our factory could execute.”

The result was the Benton work shirt, a $150 piece of clothing made from a blend of IND’s Montana-grown hemp fibers and cotton grown in Arizona. The raw fibers traveled from Fort Benton and Arizona to North Carolina to be refined and blended. The material was then sent to another North Carolina company for spinning before heading to South Carolina for weaving. The fabric was finished in Georgia before being trucked to New York City for cutting and sewing.

The difficult part wasn’t finding the companies to work with, because there are few players in American textiles. The challenge was convincing some of the companies to fit a small run of hemp-based material into their schedules.

“We were able to piece this thing together, which made it very costly,” Tweet said. “The fiber moved probably 10 more times than it had to, and freight is your biggest enemy in all these things.”

More than 97% of clothing sold in the United States is made overseas. The efficiencies of overseas production lie in scale, labor costs and experience in making modern clothing. But there are many examples of exploitative or dangerous conditions for the workers who meet the demands of a quick-turn, affordable fashion industry.

While smaller operations are coming online in the United States, some parts of the process require highly specialized equipment that startups may not be able to afford.

“It’s things like the spinning mill that turns the fiber into thread that is hugely capital-intensive and involves huge, complicated machines,” author Thanhauser said. “And also the weaving, the spinning mills. You can’t, as a small business, just buy a couple of those.”

For the Benton shirt, nearly every step required a different company. That affected the cost of the final product, but it also cost time. When Kishpaugh received a prototype in the fall of 2024 that didn’t fit right, fixing the issue meant going back through multiple hands to refine the shirt.

The Benton shirt may have debuted early in 2025, but a shipment of finished fabric went missing en route to New York City. The roll of textiles — one of the first domestic hemp fabric runs since prohibition that was painstakingly coordinated across multiple states — vanished and hasn’t been found.

“So there’s 600 yards of this historic fabric that’s warehoused somewhere,” Tweet said.

The process was once again delayed, but thankfully, there was enough additional fabric to resume production.

Smith and Rogue debuted the shirt in December, both online and in its affiliated retail stores, along with a marketing plan to showcase the effort put into it.

“You can’t just put it on the rack,” Kishpaugh said. “If you don’t know what it is, it’s just going to look like another button-up shirt. And then you look at the price tag.”

The $150 price reflects the costs of the USA manufacturing chain, Kishpaugh said, adding that Smith and Rogue’s margin isn’t as strong on this shirt as some of the company’s other clothing made overseas. He said there is a segment of consumers who respond to marketing about a USA-made shirt, even at that price.

“That is hard for some people to come to grips with,” he said. “This is $150, and this is why. We have to pay for all those other touch points.”

LINKS IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Stacks of hemp age in the IND Hemp warehouse Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Fort Benton, Mont. (Lauren Miller/Montana Free Press via AP)

The hemp for the Benton shirt run was grown in 2020 at a Meissner family farm north of Fort Benton. The fiber material was part of a crop primarily meant for other products IND was producing at the time.

“What we probably didn’t appreciate then that we most certainly do now is how much agronomic impacts and the variables that happen in the field affect the finished quality,” Tweet said.

Those factors are numerous. The variety of hemp chosen, planting density, harvest timing, soil microbes and annual precipitation all influence the crop’s suitability for textile production. There are some quality factors that Tweet can control at the Fort Benton processing plant. But if a bad crop comes in, that’s what they have to work with.

It took years to refine that process to routinely receive higher-quality hemp fibers, Tweet said. The ability to use those early 2020 crops for a shirt that was released in late 2025 was a proof of concept. Today, IND has more consistent quality fibers for use in textiles.

“No one has at scale been able to decorticate and get fibers to a point that they can be spun,” Tweet said. “Maybe it’s a reach to make that claim, but I am hard pressed to find something else.”

Plans for the second-generation Benton shirt are underway, Kishpaugh said. He hopes to scale up the process to produce larger quantities and a wider range of clothing, including outerwear and pants. He said the experience gained from producing the Benton shirt could help bring costs down a bit, but Kishpaugh and Tweet said a hybrid model is also a good avenue for Montana hemp.

“We have good factories overseas that we work with,” Kishpaugh said. “And if we can get the hemp to them, they’re set up to do the bibs, jackets. Now we’re just using American-sourced hemp versus overseas hemp.”

The constraints of cost and scale still limit growth in domestic manufacturing.

“Will there always be these opportunities to promote a full domestic supply chain? Absolutely,” Tweet said. “But they’re never going to be able to serve the larger demand to get it into everyone’s closet.”

This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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Montana Lottery Powerball, Lucky For Life results for Feb. 21, 2026

Published

1 day ago

February 22, 2026

Press Room

The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at Feb. 21, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Powerball numbers from Feb. 21 drawing

27-28-36-48-49, Powerball: 21, Power Play: 4

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Lucky For Life numbers from Feb. 21 drawing

07-11-13-45-47, Lucky Ball: 09

Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Lotto America numbers from Feb. 21 drawing

05-14-21-24-34, Star Ball: 07, ASB: 02

Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from Feb. 21 drawing

03-13-27-31, Bonus: 05

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Montana Cash numbers from Feb. 21 drawing

06-10-27-29-42

Check Montana Cash payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

Winning lottery numbers are sponsored by Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network.

Where can you buy lottery tickets?

Tickets can be purchased in person at gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores. Some airport terminals may also sell lottery tickets.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.

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