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The Big Hole’s crisis – too little, too late, and way too bad – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'June', 'George Ochenski']

Date: 2023-06-09  

More than 30 outfitters, guides, lodge owners and anglers recently submitted an “emergency request” to Montana’s Gov. Greg Gianforte to immediately employ “the full engagement and all available resources under your authority as governor to both investigate this crash and help us develop solutions, before it’s too late.” The “crash” refers to the precipitous decline in the wild trout populations, for which the Big Hole River is internationally famous.

As detailed in Matthew Kiewiet’s recent article, The Big Hole River and its continued state of peril; trout numbers again at historic lows: “Conditions appear dire as ever and the worst seems yet to come.”

If that sounds like hyperbole, it is not. As Kiewiet wrote: “Recent data from three sections of the 153-mile freestone river in southwest Montana showed the fewest number of brown and rainbow trout since data was first collected in 1969.” To put that in perspective, those numbers have plummeted from a healthy 2,000 to 3,500 trout per mile to a few hundred. And “the worst seems yet to come” refers to the extreme lack of juvenile trout biologists were able to locate during their fish surveys.

While it is truly tragic that the state of Montana could allow such degradation of this treasured river to occur through both Republican and Democratic administrations, there’s simply no getting around the fact that the choices made by the state to deal with the river’s problems have utterly failed. As one example, the Gianforte administration hasn’t even filled the fisheries manager position for the Big Hole, which has been vacant for more than a year and a half.

The “canaries in the coal mine” on the Big Hole were the vanishing Fluvial (river-dwelling) Arctic Grayling — the last population in the Lower 48 states. Reduced to a tiny fraction of their historic range, the few hundred remaining grayling continue to be decimated by chronic irrigation dewatering.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/06/09/the-big-holes-crisis-too-little-too-late-and-way-too-bad/

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