The door is now open for a globally-significant restoration from the river's headwaters to Lake Pend Oreille, thanks in part to the historic removal of the Milltown Dam and the launch of multiple Superfund cleanups of historic mining waste in the upper Clark Fork basin.  And this colassal restoration project is more than an ecological endeavor--it's economic as well.  In fact, the state of Montana estimates that up to 33 direct and indirect jobs are created for every $1 million spent on watershed restoration.

Our Vital Rivers Initiative rises to meet the challenge of basin-wide revitalization. Through our newest program, the Coalition creates partnerships and projects that fix degraded, disconnected, and dewatered creeks and streams.  In 2009, we hired a Stream Restoration Director, and in 2010 we expanded our river-protection toolbox to include the staff and flow restoration expertise of the now-dissolved Montana Water Trust.  We now have the firepower to deliver complete restoration solutions that address stream form, flow, and function -- the Vital Rivers Initiative aims to bring our waterways fully back to life.

Why the Upper Clark Fork basin?

The upper Clark Fork River corridor, a 120-mile reach between Butte and Missoula, is home to the nation's largest Superfund site.  This reach of the basin is laced with arsenic and heavy metals-- the byproduct of 150 years of intensive mining and smelting in the basin's headwaters.  The contamination has been devastating for river life and rural communities.  Millions of cubic yards of metals have worked their way into surface water, groundwater, riparian vegetation, fish, bugs, woils, and irrigation ditches.

Historic mine waste isn't the only chronic threat to stream health and riparian habitat in the upper river.  There is also dewatering from irrigation diversions, polluted runoff from agricultural lands, sediment-loading from logged-over hillsides, fish barriers, and climate change impacts.  

Though historically misused, neglected, and in some ways "written off," this 6,000-square-mile basin is really the linchpin to complete recovery, long-term resilience, and lasting health for the basin's waterways and the communities that depend on them.

View our Vital Rivers priority map for the upper Clark Fork.

Our Vital Rivers Initiative is a wide-ranging program with the following objectives:

	Stream Restoration: This is the "hands-on" area of Vital Rivers.  We work with a variety of public and private partners to assess, monitor, and improve riparian and aquatic habitat, restore eroding streambanks, remove fish passage barriers, and address other threats to stream health in native trout strongholds.
	Flow Restoration: A stream isn't much of a stream without water.  That's why our newest program works with landowners and irrigators to create win-win solutions that put water back in de-watered streams.  We pinpoint flow limitations and flow restoration opportunities, and then design and broker innovative water transactions with water users.
	Landowner and Community Collaboration: We encourage landowner participation in stream restoration projects through watershed meetings and publications, ensuring landowners are involved in setting restoration priorities.  We also build strategic partnerships with land trusts, hunters, guides, outfitters, and wildlife managers to engage diverse groups in the full-scale recovery of the watershed.
	Public Outreach: At the Coalition, we firmly believe that long-term ecological change cannot occur without simultaneous socio-economic change.  For this reason, we continually work to connect citizens with their landscape.  The Vital Rivers Initiative does more than improve streambanks and increase streamflow-- it puts students and teachers on the ground helping us to monitor our work through river studies, bird counts, and more.
	Sustainable Agriculture: Our stream restoration projects go hand-in-hand with endeavors in sustainable agriculture at the Coalition's working cattle ranch in the upper Clark Fork Valley.

Download the Vital Rivers Initiative priority map for the upper Clark Fork as a PDF

Download "Bitterroot Subbasin Planning for Fish and Wildlife Conservation" as a PDF