Anyone who drives around the state of Montana right now can see one unassailable truth: our state's renowned rivers and the prized fish which inhabit them are in big trouble. Our great rivers have withered to tiny ribbons of water, un-floatable for most recreation and uninhabitable for our native and prized trout species.

When rivers shrink, algae explodes and temperatures soar, as sunlight penetrates the water from top to bottom. As the algae decays, it consumes oxygen, turning what was a perfectly oxygenated, cold-water fish habitat into a hypoxic dead zone, where nothing can survive.

Montanans know these are no longer rare events, happening every so often. Now, it seems, this is the new normal. Like many things in nature, the reason for our declining surface water supplies is multifac

See Full Page