Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Objective: The Big Hole River Watershed Committee (BHWC) provides an open, consensus-based forum for resolving issues on the 1.8 million-acre Big Hole River watershed. Its mission is to develop understanding of the river's function and use and achieve agreement among individuals and groups with diverse viewpoints in order to best manage the watershed's limited water resources. The group assists private landowners with management decisions, acts as a liaison between land management agencies and the public, implements water management and habitat enhancement projects with willing landowners, and undertakes scientific study in order to make more informed decisions. 

Participants: Half of the BHWC Governing Members are ranchers. The others represent sportsmen, conservationists (including the Big Hole River Foundation, Trout Unlimited, Skyline Sportsmen, and The Nature Conservancy), outfitters and guides, recreationists, utilities, and local government. In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC), and other local, state and federal agency participants serve as technical advisors to the Committee 

History: Montana's Big Hole River winds through the mountain ranges, steep canyons and rolling sagebrush prairie south of Butte. The river runs over 150 miles from its headwaters above Jackson to its confluence with the Beaverhead and Ruby Rivers in Twin Bridges, where they form the Jefferson River. The lower Big Hole is classified as a Blue Ribbon fishery. The river is refuge for the last wild population of fluvial Arctic grayling, a trout species now limited in the Lower 48 to the Big Hole River. Although the Big Hole watershed encompasses nearly 1.8 million acres, only about 2,000 people live in the area, many of them making their living by ranching and hay farming. Tourism, recreation, and outfitting are also important to the economy. The Big Hole watershed is under multiple management, with 67% managed by the U.S. Forest Service, 11% by the BLM, 5% by the state of Montana, and 17% by private owners. 

In 1994, stretches of the river reached alarmingly low levels as drought conditions parched the region and irrigators diverted water for cattle and hay fields. That same year, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decided that protection of the grayling was "warranted but precluded" under the Endangered Species Act. The river, famous among fly fisherman, was also being considered by the Montana DNRC under a statute that called for identifying "chronically de-watered" rivers in the state. Such a designation would have meant installing measuring devices on all water diversions from the main stem of the river. 

Ranchers, worried about how they would share water among themselves, let alone leave enough in the river for the fish, approached then-Governor Marc Racicot with their concerns. The Big Hole Watershed Committee was formed in 1995 with the assistance of the Montana Consensus Council, a state office created by Governor Racicot, which helped set the initial ground rules and provided a facilitator to bring the various stakeholders together. Initially the BHWC worked under the auspices of the Big Hole River Foundation, which acted as its fiscal sponsor. In 2005, BHWC incorporated separately as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, with 22 governing members and a four-member steering committee that deals with administrative issues between board meetings. 

Accomplishments: In 1997, the BHWC successfully finalized the first Drought Management Plan in Montana, designed to secure critical in-stream flows for fisheries and aquatic habitat. The plan identifies four distinct reaches on the Big Hole River, assigning each a flow level that governs recreational use and triggers voluntary irrigation limits. The plan is modified annually by the BHWC to take into account new research findings, monitoring data, and on-the-ground experiences in plan implementation during the previous year. Watershed characterization and water quality classification were completed for the entire watershed and a pollutant source assessment done for the middle and lower watershed Other BHWC work studied water chemistry, expanded data collection on surface and ground water interactions, identified potential water storage areas in the upper basin, and identified viable alternatives for water management that would be anticipated to lead to increased instream flow. The BHWC spearheaded the creation of the first recreation management plan on the Big Hole River, with the goal of protecting the river from overuse while still maintaining the public's opportunity to enjoy and fish the river. In 2008, BHWC implemented 6 prioritized projects for habitat restoration and water management and they hope to continue this trend into 2009. 

Land use planning is always a critical issue in watershed protection. The BHWC worked for three years with citizens and local governments in the four concerned counties (Anaconda-Deer Lodge, Beaverhead, Butte-Silver Bow, and Madison) to develop a land use plan for the Big Hole Basin that includes development setbacks from the Big Hole River. At the same time, the people involved in this process undertook to develop a channel migration zone (floodplain) map of the entire Big Hole River, a valuable new tool for local governments. A nine-person variance board, with members from each county and the BHWC now reviews development proposals within 500 feet of the high water mark of the river and makes recommendations to the appropriate local governing bodies on any requests for setback variances. Even with the setback requirements, however, "People are still developing in the floodplain in ways that are not in keeping with community desires.” and the counties wanted to learn how to stop that," says BHWC director Noorjahan Parwana. “While the adoption of development setback ordinances along an entire river is an achievement for which the local community can deservedly take pride, ensuing development activity highlighted some inadequacies to the original intention.” 

So the BWHC organized a February 2008 conference at which attendees from around the state learned about "No Adverse Impact", an approach developed by the Association of State Floodplain Managers that Parwana says "places the onus of proving no harm on the developer, and offers power to the local planning community to enforce floodplain regulations.” Attendee interest was high, and Parwana is hopeful that "something on a statewide level will come out of this." 

To support its floodplain efforts, beginning in 2009 the BHWC’s land use focus shifted to education. They began organizing community education forums on floodplains and the ramifications of development within them. These forums aim to help the community envision the future of the watershed and understand the ways that development in the floodplain affects surface and groundwater, wells, septic systems, and the quantity and quality of water in the river. Through these meetings, BHWC hopes to determine what strategies for river protection would be most amenable to the community. In the fall additional forums devoted to protection of the riparian corridor will be undertaken. 

Since 2005, much of the BHWC's time has been devoted to the Arctic grayling issue. Even after the 1994 USFWS determination that the grayling's ESA listing was "warranted but precluded", the fish remained a candidate species. In 2002 the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watershed Project of Idaho sued the USFWS to force a listing decision. In May 2004, the USFWS settled the lawsuit, and agreed to make a final listing determination within two years. In April 2007 the USFWS announced "the withdrawal of the fluvial Arctic grayling of the upper Missouri River from the list of species being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)." The USFWS determination was that "listing this population of Arctic grayling at this time is not warranted because it does not constitute a distinct population segment as defined by the ESA." On November 15, 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity and others filed suit to force the USFWS to reconsider that listing denial. 

Meanwhile the USFWS and Montana FWP, in cooperation with Montana DNRC and the NRCS, collaboratively developed a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) "to encourage non-Federal landowners to voluntarily implement proactive conservation measures that benefit graying...by providing [the landowners] with assurances that their land and management activities will not be required to change beyond the remedies identified in their site-specific plan should grayling become listed as threatened or endangered." The CCAA specified that the most immediate human-influenced threats to the grayling in the Big Hole River are "habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation resulting from (1) reduced streamflows; (2) degraded and non-functioning riparian habitats; (3) barriers to grayling movement; and (4) the potential for grayling entrainment in irrigation ditches." The CCAA covers 382,200 acres of non-Federal lands. As of March 2008, the state and private owners of 158,169 of those acres had developed management plans and enrolled under the CCAA.

BHWC is playing a key role in facilitating the implementation of the CCAA. The BHWC has supported those efforts actively by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to dedicate to needed activities such as developing designs, implementing projects, and undertaking post-project monitoring. 

In addition, the BHWC organized a subcommittee, the Hub and Spoke group, which helps coordinate activities and facilitates communication among partners. "I was writing a grant request to fund on-the-ground work for the CCAA," recalls Parwana. "As I was asking for letters of support, I found out others were also requesting funds from the same source for similar projects. We were tripping over each other. Now we meet quarterly just to touch base and update each other. We advertise the meetings, and invite landowners to come." 

Increasing coordination on the upper reaches permitted BHWC to expand its efforts into the 80 miles of the lower Big Hole. "With the focus on the grayling, no one was focusing on the lower area. We still go to the hub and spoke meetings and help those efforts, but...there are a lot of needs on the rest of the river, and our organization is the one able to address them." 

BHWC facilitated a set of three "community visioning" meetings "where we invited all kinds of folks from the Lower Big Hole River to talk about their needs and desires," says Parwana. The resulting projects focus on improving stream flows through improved efficiency in water management, protecting floodplain and riparian areas from development through appropriate land use management measures, improving fish habitat and fisheries in general (not just for grayling). These meetings resulted in a survey of all major irrigation infrastructures on the lower Big Hole and a prioritization matrix that prioritizes potential irrigation infrastructure projects that are most likely to result in improved water management that benefits instream flow. We are ticking projects off on this matrix year by year. We completed three high priority projects in 2008 and are focused on more for 2009 and 2010. 

The BHWC continues to hold monthly public meetings and subcommittee work sessions, and has developed trust and cooperation among its members, as well as a reputation for a commitment to the community-based consensus process. The State of Montana, the Montana Wildlife Federation, and the Sonoran Institute have honored the Committee's work with awards. 

Volunteer participation appears to be increasing, unlike the case in many other collaborative groups where volunteer "burn out" and other attrition sets in after a number of years. Parwana says, "We have people who come month-in and month-out, year after year. They are really motivated. I think that comes from the early success in developing a Drought Management Plan that does seem to be making a difference in the river. We're seeing fewer and fewer conflicts among different users. They realize they all need to make sacrifices." 

Challenges/constraints: BHWC has been getting some state money, as well as federal appropriation earmarks through USFWS to help with grayling recovery and water management projects and studies. Funding general operating costs is always difficult, although a few private foundations have provided sufficient funding for BHWC to begin expanding its staff to meet the increasing workload. BHWC is working to increase its membership support and otherwise expand and diversify its funding sources. Regarding BHWC’s relationship with non-local groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity, Parwana explains, “We recognize and respect that those groups have goals that they’re trying to achieve in one way. We [BWHC] have our goals and we’re going about it in our own way – putting in better headgates, protecting willows, installing riparian fencing, management planning, community education. We don’t have time to spin our wheels by asking others to change their goals. In the end, it’s achieving their goals – just in a different way. We think of everyone as a partner as much as possible”

For more information see:

Big Hole Watershed Committee

Big Hole River Drought Management Plan

The Big Hole River Foundation

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Arctic Grayling status page