Encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between 

 man and his environment; to promote efforts which 

 will prevent or eliminate damage to the environ- 

 ment and biosphere and stimulate the health and 

 welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of 

 the ecological systems and natural resources 

 important to the state .... 



All agencies of the state are required to comply with the 

 intent of MEPA as outlined in the Act, by identifying and 

 developing methods and procedures, which will insure that 

 presently unquantified environmental amenities and values 

 may be given appropriate consideration in decision making 

 as well as economic and technical considerations. It is a 

 matter of interest and concern to establish at what point 

 the decision making process has been completed. It is not 

 within the scope of this paper to address this question, 

 but it is the responsibility of the Montana Department of 

 Fish, Wildlife and Parks to pursue the best interest of the 

 wildlife resources of this state. Decision making should 

 be a continuing process which proceeds beyond implementation 

 of a development. Environmental impact statements are Pre- 

 dictive tools which are necessary in making a "go or no go" 

 decision, but because they are predictive, they are fallible. 

 Circumstances will arise for which impacts were not pre- 

 dicted, sj the decision making tool must be available at 

 any time. We must go one step further in protecting Mon- 

 tana's wildlife resource by documenting whether the poten- 

 tialities outlined in the EIS do in fact occur; and if they 

 do, to determine what mechanisms are responsible for their 

 occurrence, then determine how the mechanisms might be modi- 

 fied to reduce or eliminate the negative impact. 



The objectives of this study were to identify the wild- 

 life species of the project area, determine their relative 

 abundance and distribution and identify those species which 

 were most vulnerable (by virtue of location or behavioral 

 characteristics) to project implementation. Once these 

 objectives were met, the next step was to define the par- 

 ticular species-mine facilities conflicts and then provide 

 immediate recommendations to avoid, or alleviate detrimental 

 consequences for the identified species. The objectives 

 have been met, the potential impacts have been identified 

 and immediate recommendations are provided below. These 

 immediate recommendations are preventative measures to help 

 maintain the status quo but it is possible to impose mea- 

 sures having beneficial long-term consequences by using bio- 

 logical monitoring programs to help us understand individual 

 species needs and ultimately employ techniques to promote 

 the long-term survival of sensitive species where they are 

 threatened by human developments. We currently have the 



81 



