Study participants work long hours, find little time in town

The potential economic windfall from the Cabinet-Yaak DNA Project seems to be slow in building, but there are still two months to go.

The Cabinet-Yaak DNA Project, an extensive research effort to analyze and track the number of Grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, is under the mantle of the U.S. Geological Survey, and employs 70 people in from Bonners Ferry to Libby and from Yaak down to Thompson Falls.

With these 70 workers, and a $1.7 million budget to work on the project, it may seem to be a boon for Lincoln County. In reality, the long hours make it difficult for many workers to infuse cash in the local communities.

Ten workers are interns from local high schools or from the University of Montana, and are paid only in experience and in a daily $23 stipend, which largely covers food expenses. Assistant techs make $12 an hour; lead techs $13, and base-camp managers (of which there are eight) make $15.

Although these are relatively competitive rates when it comes to wildlife jobs, said Project Manager Kristina “Kris” Boyd, the money isn’t being spread around in the local communities as much as other professions might. Boyd said she is frugal, a testament to the off-and-on nature of wildlife jobs.

“You never know when you are going to find another job,” she said. “I never feel good spending money. I’m so cheap!”

Boyd, who lives in Troy, said that her money stays in the area anyway. She tries to buy most supplies and tools for the project as locally as she can to keep the money in the area and to help repay how helpful Lincoln County has been to the project.

The county has provided vehicles, supplies and storage space to assist the project. Troy’s base camp shares space with a fire truck at The Lakes Barn No. 1 in the Troy Rural Fire District.

The project has made a concerted effort to hire locally, but with the limited work force, some of the labor comes from other parts of the state and elsewhere. 

“A lot of people on the project are from Montana or went to school at the University of Montana,” Boyd said. “But there are people from the east coast, the south, Alaska and even one guy from the United Kingdom.”

Workers were given the option of free housing, in reserved campsites near the eight base camps, or could rent a house or apartment in town. Kasey Mulcahy, a 23-year-old UofM graduate from Helena, elected to rent in Troy, but has not been able to spend much time at local businesses.

“I’ve been to Stein’s to go grocery shopping, and I go to work,” Mulcahy said. “That’s about it. I go visit friends and family on the off-hitch.”

The project is organized into two-week “hitches,” or periods where the crews go out and check the bear-rubs and hair-corrals (the project’s names for bits of barbed wire placed in strategic locations to grab bits of hair from various bears) and catalogues the bear DNA they find.

In the “off-hitch” period, the project workers don’t have to work their 12-hours in the field, and even the ones with free housing spend some time in local communities.

Boyd said that a few workers spent time at the rock wall in the Troy Schools Activity Center, but with floor construction there going until July 19,  that didn’t seem likely in the off-hitch.

The Home Bar and the gas station seem to be the other places those workers go, according to Katherine Spendel, a 25-year-old who lives in Bozeman. 

Other than that, the general nature of wildlife work means a collection of frugal young people don’t time to spend much money in the area, making the effect of the project on the local economy slow-building and slight.