In the Gallatin Watershed, our economy, identity, health, and safety are closely tied to our rivers and streams. When a river has the space to flood, erode, and grow native streamside vegetation, it is able to safely convey high flows with limited damage to property and infrastructure, slow and store water, support a healthy fishery, provide critical wildlife habitat, and maintain clean water. 

We need streams to do their job well. Flooding and drought are a reality in an arid headwaters watershed with a water supply driven by snowpack. As our climate changes it is predicted that our floods will get flashier and the droughts longer. We live in a “closed basin” where surface water supply has been over-allocated. While riparian areas only make up about 5% of Montana’s land cover, most of our wildlife depend on these limited slivers of land, and our prized trout fishery depends on especially cold, clean, and connected water. 

Of the over 1,000 miles of streams in the Lower Gallatin Watershed, 40% lack any woody riparian vegetation, and the system is straining. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality reports that 15 of the streams in the Lower Gallatin Watershed are impaired and unable to sustain a cold water fishery. Most summers, water rights holders make sacrifices to keep water flowing in our streams, and “hoot owl” restrictions limit angling days. Each year, we invest millions of private and taxpayer dollars to secure channels in place in order to protect threatened homes, roads, bridges, and irritation diversions and pivots, and each year we invest millions more in restoration projects to restore degraded stream reaches.