Conservation district responds to couple behind McDonald Creek home in Glacier National Park

The Flathead Conservation District says a couple that it claims illegally built a home along the banks of McDonald Creek in Glacier National Park is trying to have its cake and it eat it too.

“The plaintiffs complaint relies on the assumption that their private inholding within Glacier National Park is essentially unregulated property — subject to no state or federal laws or regulations,” the Conservation District argued in a recently filed answer to John and Stacy Ambler’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

In late 2022 and early 2023 the Amblers built a home on the banks of the idyllic creek on a roughly 2,300-square-foot, privately-owned lot along the banks of the idyllic creek in Glacier National Park. In order to do so, they poured a concrete retaining wall into the streambank and placed rock footers into the bank for decks.