U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar toured the Flathead Valley Saturday with new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe.

The two traveled with a small entourage to the Creston National Fish Hatchery, where they met with students from the Northwest Montana Native Youth Conservation Corps and Montana Conservation Corps.

From there, they went to Snappy Sport Senter in Evergreen, where Salazar paid $25 for a Montana fishing license.

“We don’t have fishing licenses in Montana,” Salazar quipped as he entered the Evergreen outdoors outlet. “We don’t want to break the law.”

Salazar and Ashe toured the store, beginning at the customer service station and eventually making their way to the stocked children’s fishing pond at the rear of the business.

In brief comments to the media, Salazar noted the intertwined relationship between conservation and the economic health of Montana.

He noted that while the state has fewer than a million residents, more than 11 million people travel to the state each year to recreate at its forests, national parks and waterways.

“You see it right here in Montana,” he said.

Salazar mentioned that he was involved in the “bi-national commitment” reached earlier this year that calls for environmental protection for the North Fork through the retirement of oil and gas on the Canadian side of the border.

“It’s important to see what our decisions in Washington, D.C., are doing here in the Flathead,” he said.

He added, “I’d always rather be in Montana than Washington, D.C.”

Ashe and Salazar also visited the Pine Grove Family Fishing Pond during their visit so they could see “the positive results of public-private partnerships aimed at promoting recreational fishing in urban areas,” according to a release.

Salazar was in Billings earlier this week to meet with representatives of the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains tribes to kick off a series of consultations to decide how $3.4 bilion in settlement money will be distributed. The government is paying the money for decades of mismanaging Indian lands.

Ashe was confirmed as the director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on June 30. Salazar was confirmed as President Barack Obama’s selection to the U.S. Department of the Interior on Jan. 20, 2009.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.