BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
Young fish need a place to hide after they hatch, typically in shallower side channels or in brushy or woody areas that make it difficult for big fish to reach them.
Without such hiding spots, fingerlings become food.
Following the June 2022 floods that swept down the Stillwater River, boosting flows 3.5 feet above flood stage, many landowners along the stream had their homes or property damaged.
In the wake of the high water, close to 350 projects were authorized just in Stillwater County to rebuild bridges and armor banks with rock or concrete to protect buildings and infrastructure from future high waters.
“I would say 90 something percent of them are not fish friendly,” said Bryan Giordano, a fisheries biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. “So we’re looking at a lot of detrimental projects.”
Post-flood assessment
Giardano recently talked to the Magic City Fly Fishers, noting he typically receives requests for about 30 bank protection projects a year in Stillwater County. Following the flood, it was closer to 120 for private landowners. Combined with nearby Carbon and Sweet Grass counties, and including permits for municipal projects, the number ballooned to more than 860 permits.
Permission to conduct work along rivers and streams is authorized under two different permitting programs in Montana. Landowners and corporations must seek a 310 permit, which is approved by the local conservation district office. SP 124 permits are required for state agencies, cities and counties under the Montana Stream Protection Act.
The 310 permit was created by the Natural Streambed and Land Preservation Act to keep “rivers and streams in as natural or existing condition as possible, to minimize sedimentation and to recognize beneficial uses.”
When it comes to 310 permits, fisheries biologists like Giordano offer technical guidance.
“It’s a compromise thing, because the landowner is standing there and saying, ‘Well, my house flooded, or I lost my bank and my pivots are about to fall into the river, or whatever,’” Giordano said. “So there are legitimate concerns, and it’s pretty awesome that Montana has this law. It’s unique to the state. So forethought was really good, but as far as actually following through with it, it’s only as good as people are.”
When asked about accountability or enforcement when a project is done that’s harmful to the river, Giordano said that requires a complaint to the conservation district. The district has the ability to assess fines, but he noted for wealthy landowners such payments are little more than an inconvenience.
Also, since conservation district board members are neighbors who volunteer, they are unlikely to be aggressive.
“A lot of times they don’t want to be like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to spend another $100,000 on the riverbank, and do it differently,” Giordano pointed out.
In some situations, he said people were armoring the bank even before a house was built out of fear of future flooding. One option to prevent this occurring would be for counties to require homes to be set back from streams a certain distance to avoid flood damage.
Along the Boulder River, in Sweet Grass County, Giordano said few homes were flooded compared to the Stillwater River because most residences were built farther away from the river.
Given Montanans’ passion for private property rights, however, the likelihood of any such laws passing seems remote.
90% decline in fish populations
Following the 2022 flood and high water two years later, the Stillwater River has become an example of how human alterations of streams, a warming climate and lower water flows affect wild fish.
“Post flood, we as humans wanted to put everything back and protect everything” Giordano said, acknowledging “it was a scary time for property owners and municipalities.”
“I would argue, we went above and beyond on protection,” he added, “and I think the fish are the ones that are going to have the biggest issue from that.”
One bank project isn’t a problem, but when there are many over several years “it’s like death by a thousand cuts,” Giordano said. Rivers forced into a strict channel see increased velocities, higher water temperatures and decreased large and small fish habitat as the stream’s form and function is altered.
All of the post-flood work along the Stillwater’s banks, in addition to new homes being built close to the river’s shore, has come at the same time Montana — in between floods — has seen lower stream flows and hotter weather.
In portions of FWP’s Region 5, which is headquartered in Billings, the result has been a 90% decline in fish populations in the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork Yellowstone rivers over the past 20 years, Giordano said.
On the Stillwater’s upper section, from the mine down to Moraine Fishing Access site, recent fish surveys have shown about 186 brown trout per mile compared to a high of 1,350 in 2000. On the Yellowstone River from Columbus upstream to Springdale, FWP crews counted 270 rainbow and brown trout per mile compared to a high of 802 in 2014.
“We’re watching the Boulder River now kind of mimicking what the upper Stillwater looks like,” Giordano said, noting there are large fish, but little juvenile recruitment.
“So we don’t know where we’re losing those fish quite yet, whether it’s from when they hatch to the first winter or at year two or three, but they’re not really reaching adulthood and filling in that younger age class,” Giordano said.
Restoring lost habitat
In an attempt to boost the fishery, FWP is working with Trout Unlimited on several projects. One part of the Stillwater River that will be targeted is between the small town of Nye and the Stillwater Mine.
“We have fish that we’ve documented that swim from Paradise Valley all the way up to Nye to spawn,” Giordano noted, more than 100 miles by highway. “That’s a long way for a fish to go do its thing.”
The work would include reconnecting some now dry side channels to create habitat for small fish. If the projects prove successful, like they have on the Bighorn River, similar work may be undertaken on other streams in the region.
The project’s design could be finalized by September, allowing FWP to go to the Fish and Wildlife Commission in search of funding.
“I want to use a variety of projects so we can see which ones seem to hold the most juvenile fish,” Giordano said.
He also noted that with money from the 2011 oil spill FWP is working with the Yellowstone River Parks Association to remove rock that’s armoring a bank at what is now Dover Park. The project will restore habitat for warmwater fish species just downstream from Billings.
When Kris Spanjian, president of the Magic City Fly Fishers, asked what she could tell friends who have armored their stream’s bank to make them more fish friendly, Giordano suggested they plant willows.
“We consider it kind of a lipstick on a pig method,” Giordano said. “But, yeah, try to get any vegetation over the top of that rock. It can help the shading.”
He also suggested that landowners leave any driftwood that gathers along the banks as that provides fish habitat by slowing the water down.
West Rosebud Creek
Although the 2022 flood was like a firehose in its ferocity, Giordano said it also opened new side channels and created log jams that provided habitat for fish.
On West Rosebud Creek, a tributary to the Stillwater where flows are controlled by the Mystic Lake Dam, the high water created new side channels creating spawning and rearing habitat for fish and bugs.
“We even saw a bump in our young fish last year,” he said, which would have been born the year of the flood.
“We were excited about it, but it didn’t translate into this year,” he added. “I really think a lot of it had to do with our reaction post flood. We took so much of that habitat out of the river that we didn’t have a place for that bumper crop of fish.”