Conservation award

The Flathead Audubon recently honored Flathead National Forest employee Teresa Wenum for her work in conservation education. Wenum has been the Flathead Forest’s conservation education specialist for the past 16 years. Flathead Audubon’s Conservation Achievement Award recognized Wenum’s dedication to conservation and the many successful nature-centered projects she fostered, including Raptor Day, Frog Day, Family Forestry Expo, Artist Wilderness Connection, Summit Nature Center, and Education Trunk Workshops. Wenum for her part credited partners such as Flathead Community of Resource Educators and Crown of the Continent Ecosystem Education Consortium. For more information on the Flathead Forest’s conservation education program, visit online at www.fs.usda.gov/main/flathead/learning.

Bird festival

Flathead Audubon will co-host the annual Montana Audubon “Wings Across the Big Sky” bird festival at the Hilton Garden Inn, in Kalispell, on June 8-10. The festival will celebrate the area’s ecological diversity and abundance of birdlife with 27 guided field trips to the area’s shrublands, wetlands, grasslands and forests on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Led by ornithologists and local bird experts, the birding trips will include tours of national wildlife refuges in the Flathead and Mission valleys and trips to Glacier National Park in search of harlequin ducks. For more information and to register for the event, visit online at www.mtaudubon.org/birdwatching/festival or call 406-443-3949.

Nominees needed

Headwaters Montana, a local conservation group, is seeking nominees for its Jack Potter Glacier National Park Stewardship Award, which recognizes the legacy of Jack Potter, who retired in 2011 after 40 years of public service in Glacier National Park. Headwaters Montana will make a cash award on an annual basis to an individual within the National Park Service, or the public, or to an organization, that goes beyond the call of duty to protect the Park’s natural resources. Nominations can be e-mailed to info@headwatersmontana.org or mailed to P.O. Box 4301, Whitefish MT 59937. Deadline is Sept. 30. For more information or a nomination form, call Dave Hadden at 873-0783.

Mack Days

As the 2012 Spring Mack Days fishing event winded down last week, Tanner Murry, of Columbia Falls, was in first place for the 13-17 year old category with 284 fish caught. The event is sponsored by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is aimed at suppressing the lake trout population in Flathead Lake. The top prize is $10,000 for catching a tagged lake trout. The prizes for other tagged fish are five at $5,000 each and 10 at $1,000 each. The fish are given to food banks across Northwest Montana.