When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced in 2014 that arctic grayling does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the entire community in Montana’s Big Hole Watershed could both breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate its hard work. A year later, the arctic grayling population is still increasing, and private landowners are continuing to implement conservation practices that benefit the land and the fish.
Arctic grayling exhibit a migratory behavior, with seasonal movements between habitats in the Big Hole River. Grayling in the Big Hole River will travel well over 50 miles a year to access its habitat needs. Migration is critical as fish seek out foraging habitat and thermal refuge in or near cooler tributaries during times of high stream temperatures in the mainstream.
Using funds from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a Natural Resources Conservation Service program that provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers, NRCS helped ranchers improve their irrigation infrastructure. NRCS assisted with developing conservation plans to install irrigation gates, stock water tanks, fencing and other projects needed to facilitate better management of the Big Hole River.
In addition to providing irrigation infrastructure, NRCS—in partnership with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, USFWS Partners for Wildlife program, and landowners—installed Denil Fish Ladders to address habitat fragmentation in the Big Hole River and its tributaries. Fish ladders allow fish to migrate upstream when the water is being diverted. They are also important for fish moving downstream, as they provide an option for passage through the diversion instead of through the headgate and into an irrigation ditch.
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NRCS and partners have worked with landowners to install more than 50 fish ladders in the upper Big Hole River Valley resulting in more than 70 miles of stream habitat being reconnected and 98 percent of the core grayling habitat being reconnected. One of the biological goals for grayling management in the Big Hole is to increase the distribution of fish in the system. Conservation actions implemented were designed to help reach that goal.
