Connect With Your Community!
Connect With Your Community!
FWP is using its water rights to bolster 10 rivers negatively impacted by the winter's meager snowpack
Pictured is the Jefferson River near Three Forks. Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks has used its fishery-and-recreation-oriented water rights to booster flows on the Jefferson and nine other Montana Rivers. Voice photo by Melissa Jenkins
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is asserting the water rights it holds in 10 Montana rivers to keep more water in cold-water fisheries facing low flows wrought by this winter's meager snowpack.
FWP water rights and instream flow specialist Stephen Begley told Montana Free Press that the department has used its fishery- and recreation-oriented water rights to bolster flows in the Blackfoot, Missouri, Jefferson, Boulder, Beaverhead, Smith, Shields, Tobacco and Gallatin rivers. The agency also this week decided to enforce a water right it holds for a Kootenai River tributary - Young Creek - and...
