IF YOU WANT to see one of the next great frontiers of the West expanding in real time, take a drive through the Clearwater Wind Project in eastern Montana. It’s still under construction, but by the time Montana’s biggest wind farm is fully operational, it will feature 269 turbines, an 85-mile transmission line, access roads, substations, and other facilities. It will generate 750 megawatts of energy, or enough to power about 225,000 homes. Since the project is largely built on private land, it’s estimated to pay about $226 million over 30 years to leasing landowners and another $217 million in property taxes to Custer, Garfield, and Rosebud counties.
But this wind farm also represents a single skirmish in the bigger fight to balance the needs of wildlife with our own. Clearwater is built smack in the middle of Montana’s sagebrush steppe ecosystem. Greater sage…