Opinion: Please don’t drop your bear off here

Over the course of a career I don’t know how many meetings I’ve sat through. Too many. Most meetings are quick and painless, but others can drag on for hours. The bulk are wholly forgettable, though I distinctly recall a school board “work session” on just a fabulous sunny, warm evening where a person went over a curriculum for what seemed like hours.

Curriculums, I suppose, are very important things to the teachers and staff and students that use them.

But after that I vowed to skip “work sessions” whenever humanly possibly. Life is just too short and there aren’t that many sunny evenings to begin with.

The pandemic had few silver linings but the one thing it did usher in is the virtual meeting, where you can attend, or at least listen in, without having to actually be in the room. School “bored” meetings are now palpable. At least I can work on other stuff, or at least tune out when it comes to the discussion about which textbook

the math teachers want for 2022. You know, because math, the last I checked, was math, and it’s still about numbers and equations that haven’t changed in oh, I dunno, since the beginning of time.

But I digress.

This is not about math. This is about an actual fun thing that happened at a recent virtual meeting — the North Fork Interlocal. The Interlocal is a forum where all the various agencies that have stake in the North Fork get together and give reports to the North Fork residents. This year’s winter meeting, you guessed it, was virtual. What caught my eye was the last sentence of the report from Chris Young, patrol agent in charge for the Border Patrol.

Young politely asked Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks for some, um, grizzly management.

“Final Note: Whitefish BP really does prefer any trapped grizzlies dropped off somewhere other than our cabin. At the very least a heads

up…we realize there are limited locations to do this. There have been a few occasions where grizzlies have decided to hang around for a few days and that causes a bit of risk/anxiety for my guys,” Young said in an email to the crowd.

(Apparently Border Patrol protocol doesn’t allow for virtual meetings, so Young sent in his report by email.) FWP, in turn, replied they would consult with BP before they did any more grizzly releases in the area. That exchange made me laugh out loud. See? Not all meeting are bad.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.