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Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch

Cattle and Clean Water at Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch From 2005 to 2021, Clark Fork Coalition and partners ran Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch (DCCR), a 2,300-acre working cattle ranch in Montana’s Deer Lodge Valley, to be a living classroom for the largest river repair job in the West, located in…
Cottonwood-Baggs Fish Passage

In the late fall of 2019, the Coalition finished a stream reconnection project on Baggs Creek and Cottonwood Creek in the upper Clark Fork. Eight miles of stream was opened to fish passage for the first time in many decades. Cottonwood Creek also benefited from a large fish screen project…
Valiton Ditch Split Season Lease

Three landowners are working with us to reduce late season water use on the mainstem Clark Fork. They lease CFC their water right from mid-July through August and cease irrigation if flows reach low levels. We also improved a diversion to help fish passage. This project strikes a balance between…
Broken Circle Diversion Upgrade

Historically, Broken Circle Ranch rebuilt their irrigation diversion every summer using broken concrete and streambed material, which resulted in passage issues for fish and recreationists. In 2023, the ranch worked with the Coalition to install an innovative floating fish screen and river pump that requires minimal structure in the river…
Helen-Johnson Ditch Project

The Helen Johnson project reduced irrigation withdrawals from the mainstem of the Upper Clark Fork by over 15 cfs on three ranches. It removed a fish barrier and eliminated entrainment issues. The project replaced a portion of the ditch on the Lampert Ranch with a 2-mile stock water pipeline that…
Exempt Wells Loophole

In 1973, the Montana Legislature passed the Water Use Act, which created a process for permitting new water rights. To reduce permitting burdens on small, individual users, it exempted groundwater use for “domestic, agricultural, or livestock purposes.” This meant applicants did not have to prove that the water was physically…
In-stream Sediment Sampling 2022

In partnership with Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Natural Resources Damage Program, and the University of Montana – Western, we measured the amount of sediment in streams along several reaches of the Upper Clark Fork River. Students collected over 70 in-stream sediment samples to see if sediment levels affect trout…
Thermal Mapping of the Upper Clark

Professor Raja Nagisetty and environmental engineering graduate student Meggie Olsen at Montana Tech, along with several other collaborators, completed a series of drone flights on the upper Clark Fork River to study thermal refugia habitat. Professor Raja and his team documented an unremediated reach of the Upper Clark Fork…
Assessments of Geomorphology and Macroinvertebrate Diversity

The CFC has coordinated data collection efforts with Professor Rob Thomas at UM Western annually since 2019. Over that period, Rob’s students have focused on a variety of studies in the UCF OU from assessments of geomorphology and macroinvertebrate diversity on both remediated and unremedied phases, to a study examining…
Slickens Assessments in the Upper Clark Fork

The CFC coordinated with Fish, Wildlife & Parks to complete a hazard assessment of the remaining slickens in Reach A of the Upper Clark Fork Superfund Operable Unit. In the summer of 2019, over 170 individual slickens were assessed and mapped for hazards related to surface runoff and channel avulsion…