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Montana Land Board decides to take stronger role in water decisions • Daily Montanan

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Montana Land Board decides to take stronger role in water decisions • Daily Montanan


The Montana Land Board decided to take back the authority it ceded decades ago at its May meeting, but the decision to do that, along with a recent Supreme Court ruling, has cast an uneasy tension between state leaders and the agricultural community.

As temperatures continue to rise and the threat of fire grows, ranchers and farmers continue to be concerned about their land and access to water. In Montana, water rights are notoriously complex and litigious, with some disputed claims still outliving the residents who originally brought them.

At issue is how the State of Montana claims water rights when dealing with state-owned leased lands. Like many western states, large tracts of land are held in trust by the state and money made from leasing the land goes into a fund to support public education.

However, a recent court case and the management of water rights by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the state agency in charge of the trust lands, has sparked renewed concerns that the state may try to take water rights away from property owners.

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The case, Schutter vs. State Land Board, was decided in May and the state’s highest court ruled that if a resident filed a water claim, even if the source of the water was on private land, that if it has been used in part to water state land then the state owns part of that water right. That has led to an uproar from the agricultural community, which is worried that simply transferring water from private land to leased state land will create an opportunity for the state to take water rights.

From that decision and recent contentious land board meetings, the Montana Land Board, comprised of the five “constitutional” officers (the governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state and superintendent of public education), has revisited its policy of delegating legal challenges to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Because of the uproar and concern from the Schutter case, the land board decided to reverse a decades-long policy of delegating water rights decisions to agency officials, and will now require any potential future water cases go to the board for permission to proceed. In other words, the DNRC will no longer be able to litigate or challenge cases without first getting the approval of the land board, a change brought by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who had previously vowed to update the policy to bring more oversight to the elected leaders and less authority to the agency.

The proposal was supported unanimously. All members of the state’s Land Board are Republican.

Though the policy promised more oversight, farmers, ranchers, attorneys and those in agriculture seemed uncertain whether the move would help with disputes.

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Many members of the agriculture community testified that they were still worried about the uncertainty they saw in the application of Montana law. Many expressed concern that during dry years if they used water they owned on state land to help, the state may try to claim a portion of it.

“We have to be assured that if we use our water on state land,” said Sen. Butch Gillespie, who gave public comment as both a rancher and Republican state senator.

Carl DeVries, a rancher from Roberts and a member of the Senior Agricultural Water Rights Alliance agreed.

“We need assurances if it is a temporary situation,” DeVries said.

For months, farmers and ranchers have said that without more protections or assurances that they would be hesitant to lease land for fear of losing water rights.

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Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras worked with the DNRC to present to the Land Board an overview about how the state department works with residents who bid on and win the state leases. Juras is not only the lieutenant governor, but comes from an agricultural background and is an attorney. She pointed out that paperwork can be filed with the state to protect temporary water usage on state land.

Betsy Story, a water law attorney from Helena, said that she was still concerned about the gray areas of the law, including when the state claims part of a water right that originates completely on private land. What happens, she asked, if another person in the future wins the lease for state land? She said a situation like that raises plenty of thorny legal issues.

Knudsen said he hoped returning legal oversight to the land board will help mitigate some of the conflict.

“This means that if the DNRC wants to make a legal claim, it must get explicit approval from us,” Knudsen said. “This should be as much as it can be in the public.”

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Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for June 23, 2026

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

Here’s a look at June 23, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from June 23 drawing

48-51-60-63-66, Mega Ball: 20

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from June 23 drawing

06-21-22-31, Bonus: 13

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.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

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

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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Man Driving Giant Banana Gets Pulled Over in Montana

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Man Driving Giant Banana Gets Pulled Over in Montana


We cover lots of hard news here at The Drive. Y’know, the stuff that keeps you updated on the automotive industry and enthusiast scene. Other times, we don’t. Other times, we write silly car-related stuff because it’s fun. This is one of those times. A giant banana recently got pulled over in Montana, and as the Cowboy State Daily put it, it wasn’t its first time.

According to the Montana State Police, the giant banana car and its driver, Steve Braithwaite, were pulled over near Billings because part of the license plate was blocked. He did not receive a ticket. Also, the plate reads “SPLIT.”

“We’ve stopped speeders, distracted drivers, and even a few unusual vehicles… but this one definitely stands out.
The Big Banana Car was stopped cruising near Billings today. While it may be apPEALing, traffic laws still apply to fruit. 😎 🍌
Safe travels, Montana,” said the Montana State Police’s Facebook page.

According to the report, Braithwaite has been pulled over hundreds of times over the decade he’s been driving his banana car across the country. In fact, he believes that during the first few years he had the thing, he was one of the most frequently pulled-over men in America.

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“Driving around in a banana and having all these people, all these smiles and waves, affects me. It actually does something fantastic,” he told the outlet.

He even claims to have been pulled over once for “peeling out,” which was, of course, a joke.

Another report claims that Braithwaite began working on the fiberglass banana in 2008 and finished it in 2011. It’s based on a 1993 Ford F-150 and is a bout 23 feet from tip to tip.

Keep on keepin’ on, Steve.

Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com

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As deputy editor, Jerry draws on a decade of industry experience and a lifelong passion for motorsports to guide The Drive’s short- and long-term coverage.




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The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests

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The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests


Log landing, western Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Way back in 1995 Bob Brown, the Republican president of the Montana Senate, called me into his office.

He had co-sponsored a bill with a pro-logging Missoula Democrat to establish a “sustained yield” level of logging on Montana’s state trust lands – and he was worried it wasn’t working out the way he hoped.

Bob was right to be worried then and Montanans are right to be worried now because Trump’s Forest Service Chief and former timber industry lobbyist Tom Schultz, has just unleashed the “sustained yield” scam on Montana’s National Forests.

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To appreciate Brown’s concerns, it’s important to understand that the 1995 Montana legislature had two-thirds Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Republican Marc Racicot in the Governor’s Office.

Those majorities put Montana’s environment in the cross-hairs with a raft of industry-friendly deregulatory bills.  That included the timber industry, which was losing the “timber wars” in large part because Plum Creek Timber, one of the largest private forest landowners in the West, had decided to “liquidate” its “timber assets” – also known as “forests.”

That decision resulted in massive clearcuts since there were virtually no regulations on logging private land.  Plum Creek scalped the forests of northwest Montana, including the lands around Bob’s home in Whitefish, leaving barren, knapweed infested stumpfields that remain to this day. His goal was to protect the lands around the trout streams he’d fished growing up and hoped the bill would do that.

It was the closing weeks of the session and Bob wanted to know if it was possible to reduce the environmental impacts of his bill since it had been heavily amended to favor extraction, not “sustained yield.”  My advice was to let the bill die because he didn’t have the votes to remove the amendments the timber industry lobbyists stuck on the bill.  But he didn’t take that advice, the bill passed, and the logging level for Montana’s state forests was set at 52 to 55 million board feet per year.

Two years later, Tom Schultz went to work for Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, heading the trust lands timber division and earning the sobriquet “Chainsaw Tom” for his pro-logging zeal.  Like the stumpfields, his dedication to the timber industry remains to this day – only now he’s in charge of the United States Forest Service and bringing chainsaws to millions of acres of our remaining intact forests.

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If you believe that “sustained yield” is supposed to be a carefully calculated determination of how many millions of board feet of timber can be logged every year on a sustainable basis that means limiting logging to the pace at which the forests can regrow – regardless of the demands of the rapacious timber industry.

In the “old days” loggers liked to refer to forests as “100 year gardens.”  But of course forests aren’t gardens, they’re complex ecosystems – and the timber industry doesn’t wait a century for forests to regrow.

It’s unlikely that quaint misnomer is even applicable in today’s climate with hotter, longer summers, minimal snowpack, and extreme drought.  Yet, Montana’s “sustained yield” is now nearly 10 million board feet a year higher than when Brown’s bill passed, defying logic and science and justifying his concerns from 30 years ago.

“Chainsaw Tom” Schultz has now reappeared and demands that 350-500 million board feet of Montana’s national forests be logged over 10 years. Schultz’s timber industry lobbyist background offers a clue as to where that “sustainable yield” number came from — and the reason we will likely be left with nothing but stumpfields and knapweed from his “landscape scale” logging of our remaining intact forests.

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