Montana - Local Partnerships, Wildlife Habitat

Ronan Spring Creek is just four miles long, located in northwestern Montana about 50 miles north of Missoula, and flows into Crow Creek and the Flathead River; and eventually drains into the Columbia River. Until 1996, it was many yards wide and a few inches deep. The cumulative effects of farming practices, urbanization, and homebuilding had loaded Ronan Spring Creek with silt and severely degraded sections of this one-time home to trout. One overgrazed stretch "was a disaster," according to Dean Vaughan of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

So, people decided to do something about Ronan Spring Creek. It began with staff of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; Bill Edelman, who owns land on the creek; and Herb Webb, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) liaison working in the tribal field office. They began contacting neighbors up and down the creek, local groups, and state and Federal natural resource agencies. Edelman says, "We put together the nonprofit Lower Flathead Valley Community Foundation, using restoration as a tool to bring people together to build good will in the community. It's working like gangbusters."

Webb describes the large partnership. Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department's Future Fisheries program assisted through its restoration grant program. The Ronan State Bank contributed $2,000 for restocking trout and the Harriman Trout Farms donated some fish. The Tribes have contributed staff time and expertise--Les Evarts, a fisheries biologist with the Tribes, helped with design and has been monitoring the creek. The Lake County Conservation District has helped. The Flathead Chapter of Pheasants Forever put in $5,000 for shrubs. The Mission Valley Pheasants Forever Chapter and the FWS Partners for Wildlife program paid for fencing the corridor and entered into agreements with landowners to protect the riparian zone. Classes from the local community college planted some of the native shrubs and trees in the riparian corridor. NRCS has worked with all the groups to coordinate the project--and, of course, with the landowners along the 2.5 miles of stream. Evarts says, "It was our first big effort, and it was fairly sizable. It stimulated interest in the community and it has stimulated several other projects. It was logistically difficult with half a dozen funding sources, over a dozen landowners, and cooperation between the Tribes and the state and Federal governments, but it was successful." Webb says one result of having so many partners "was that we did the project for much less than what some consultants said it would cost."

Edelman said, "We took a stream 200 feet wide and 3 inches deep and restored it to 8 feet wide and 4 feet deep." The stream was reconstructed with heavy equipment, "dredged, narrowed, and deepened so it can carry sediment and provide fish habitat; we restored its sinuosity," says Glenn Phillips of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department. Gravel beds and rock were put in for fish habitat and spawning, some flooded areas were made into backwaters for waterfowl, and the banks were fenced and planted with trees and shrubs. According to Vaughan, work on the project generated its own excitement. "There were a few landowners who didn't want to play, but when the machines showed up and we were about done with the last property, there was one more property owner who had declined to partake--but he liked what he saw and came around."

When Edelman first contacted him, Vaughan agreed that FWS would like to restore the creek for fisheries and wildlife habitat. Vaughan went to talk individually with landowners, often with Edelman, to get them to sign Wildlife Extension Agreements so the FWS program could provide restoration funding and obtain monitoring and construction access. Vaughan explains that Wildlife Extension Agreements (running 10 to 30 years) are informal "gentleman's agreements" designed to be simple and flexible, with no two agreements exactly the same. On Ronan Spring Creek, the agreements provide for no grazing for a minimum of three years. "Then we'll see what the vegetation shows us we should do; whether to wait for ground-nesting birds--neotropical songbirds, ducks, etc. Maybe it will need more time, or we might prescribe some light grazing. It may sound like a wishy-washy system," Vaughan says, "but it's really flexible."

Edelman, by all accounts a man who seizes an opportunity when he sees one, seems to have been the "human spark plug" required for the restoration of Ronan Spring Creek. Those involved in the project all agree that his enthusiasm and tireless pursuit of any and all options to advance the project went "much faster than anyone expected," according to Webb. As Vaughan put it, "If I had gone out as a government employee and tried to get this project off the ground--to get everybody to work together--it would have been nice, but it doesn't often happen that way. It takes a landowner like Bill Edelman to get everybody to pull together." Edelman himself says, "I'm a do-gooder out of control."

However a partnership gets pulled together, and however many people contribute to a restoration effort such as that on Ronan Spring Creek, the proof, of course, is in the results. Webb says trout returned almost at once after the restoration. And in the spring of 1998, Edelman reported, "one of the nicer things I heard recently is that we're seeing some usage by rainbows [trout] of the spawning gravels, so we should get some reproduction. There's also been a tremendous increase in pheasants and songbirds."

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