By Birch Malotky

Senator Dylan Roberts might be one of the few people in the Colorado state legislature who has been interested in state trust land for years. This widespread but generally misunderstood type of land is often lumped in with public lands, but it has a specific and unique purpose that sets it apart from national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and so on. Trust lands—which the federal government granted to states when they became states—are managed to support K-12 schools and other public institutions, usually by making money to fund them.

Most state trust lands have been leased for agriculture, mining, and logging, but not all parcels—which are scattered all over Colorado— have good soil, or minerals, or forests. Roberts says there are “small tracts of land within cities and towns or along highways that aren’t going to be used for traditional leasing ever, and are not wildlife corridors or anything like that, so they’re not generating any economic value.” The senator, who represents a district with “some very high-cost communities that deal with significant housing challenges,” thinks that building affordable housing on these random bits of trust land could make good money for the schools while helping keep working families where they are needed.

He points to a quarter-acre plot “right in the heart of Denver that was state trust land and, for whatever reason, hadn’t been developed or sold.” The Colorado State Land Board, which manages state trust lands, built affordable housing on the parcel back in 2022, and “that became the model,” Roberts says. When he started looking at state trust land in his district, which spans much of northwestern Colorado and includes places like Vail, Aspen, and Breckinridge, he discovered several promising parcels “along already existing transportation corridors and near other residential and commercial development.” Through these efforts, one project is already moving forward in Dowd Junction, between Avon and Vail.

As the 150th anniversary of Colorado, and its state trust lands, approached, Roberts connected with a number of other legislators and organizations interested in exploring and expanding these kinds of creative uses of trust land. Together, they drafted and passed HB 1332 last spring, which instructs a working group to conduct an analysis of state trust lands and write a report with recommendations on opportunities to advance affordable housing, conservation, climate resilience, biodiversity, recreation, and renewable energy.

The act, presented as a kind of sesquicentennial performance review, is the latest juncture in a long history of Colorado figuring how to make the best out of a group of lands that were designated for a certain purpose, but weren’t optimally designed to fulfill that purpose. Throughout that time, the scattered, widespread nature of the parcels has proven both challenge and opportunity, and has required creative thinking and a reckoning with the legal and moral responsibility of managing not only for this generation or the next, but for generations far into the future.

Most people have never heard of state trust lands. Matt Samelson, an attorney with Western Environmental Law Partners who helped advocate for HB 1332 and has been appointed to the working group, admits that it’s “a pretty weird little corner of the land world.” The Colorado State Land Board Director, Nicole Rosmarino, says that most Coloradans are not aware of the specifics of her agency’s mission. But that agency is the second largest landowner in the state—responsible for 2.8 million surface acres and 4 million sub-surface acres—and its mission goes back to the founding fathers, Manifest Destiny, and a desire to measure and divide the world into a uniform grid.

Before the Constitution was even adopted, a newly independent America turned to securing its claims to the western frontier, wanting to ensure that new territories did not try to split off from the young and fragile republic, and also that they would hold to the democratic ideals of the revolutionaries. Many saw public education as essential to preparing the nation’s citizens for their civic duties, but funding was a problem. The settled, eastern states had an established tax base, but yet-to-be-formed western states did not, and the federal government was in massive debt from the war.

Cash poor but land rich, the Continental Congress passed the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which divided the West into square townships, among other things. Each township was made up of 36 sections of one square mile (640 acres) each. The 16th section, located at the heart of each township, was reserved “for the maintenance of public schools within said township.”

This one provision laid the foundation for more than a century of land grants, from Ohio’s statehood in 1803 to Arizona’s in 1912. Totaling more than 80 million acres, the school land grants made during this period were nearly as large as those made to the railroads. So, this is where the question of a system designated for a purpose, but not designed for it, begins. Why were the grants made in this pattern? How, exactly, were these lands meant to support public schools? And why the 16th section?

It’s tempting to imagine that a central section was reserved for the purpose of actually hosting a schoolhouse, such that each township was organized around its civic core and distributed across the countryside with mathematical precision. It does seem to fit with the intellectual zeitgeist of the revolutionaries, who were enamored of rationalism and the idea of an agrarian democracy. But if that was the intent, realities on the ground rendered it more symbolic than practicable, creating a mismatch between how the lands were distributed and how they came to be managed that has created challenges for administrators ever since.

At the least, it seems the Continental Congress did intend for there to be a school in every 36-square-mile township in the West, which explains why the grant pattern was one parcel in each township instead of a single block of school trust lands. The evidence is in the way that the initial grants to new states were directed to township-level governments for the exclusive benefit of that township’s schools. The vision was not a statewide, state-administered school system, where land or a school in one township could support a broader area, but rather one characterized by self-sufficiency and local control.

This likely reflects, in part, post-revolutionary uneasiness with centralized government, but it was a fundamental flaw in both purpose and design. The reality of settlement and western landscapes meant that population centers formed around travel corridors, arable land, military outposts, and other strategic features, rather than the artificial boundaries of the rectangular survey system. This left plenty of townships lacking people, governments, and the need for a school.

In response, Congress changed to whom the grants were made, and for whose benefit. By the mid-1800s, it was granting land to state governments rather than local ones, for the support of schools statewide rather than exclusively for schools in the township where the land was located. But which lands were granted did not change, so the basic pattern of reserving a little bit of land all across the state persisted. This created a kind of checkerboard land ownership that people today sometimes call “the blue rash” because of the way that state trust parcels—light blue on many maps— pock the surface of many western states.

The scattered nature of these lands is the first challenge that trust land managers have had to contend with over the years. Smaller, discontinuous parcels don’t offer the management efficiencies that larger parcels do, and they are more vulnerable to impacts from the lands around them. “The checkerboard makes it hard to have consistent management,” Samelson says, “because the surrounding uses and surrounding ownership may just have a very different perspective than the state does.” For example, he asks, “How do you manage a little 640-acre parcel inside of a Wilderness Study Area? Are you actually going to generate money from that?”

In Colorado—which received sections 16 and 36 in each township “for the support of common schools”—the checkerboard mostly overlays the eastern plains, with far less state trust land appearing west of the Continental Divide. That’s partially because Colorado didn’t receive sections that were already spoken for, including a lot of the Ute reservation, which at that time covered roughly the western third of Colorado.

In today’s Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute reservations, there are still no state trust lands—a sharp contrast to many states. A Grist report found that Utah, for example, claimed more than half a million acres, or 5.7 percent, of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, while the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota is nearly 20 percent state trust land.

In answer to the difficulties of the checkerboard, Colorado has, over the years, successfully traded away many of its trust parcels that were surrounded by Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands, and pursued consolidation. It now holds title to several properties of 25,000 acres or more, including State Forest State Park and a number of ranches. But land exchanges can be complex and slow, and require a landowner who is willing to trade, so plenty of those 640-acre sections remain.

As to the question of how the reserved sections were meant to support schools, the 1967 Lassen v. Arizona Highway Department Supreme Court case implies that at least some of the granted lands were intended to be used as building sites for schools. Indeed, the Maxwell Schoolhouse in Buena Vista still stands today as a historic site on Colorado trust land. But the court also goes on to say that because “the lands were obviously too extensive and too often inappropriate” for “actual use by the beneficiaries…the grant was plainly expected to produce a fund, accumulated by sale and use of the trust lands, with which the State could support the public institutions designated by the [Enabling] Act.”

This practice of funding schools through leasing and sale was well-established in the colonies when the Land Ordinance passed in 1785 and is, for the most part, exactly what happened. The states created before 1851, like California, sold all or most of their state trust lands, with at least one case of granted lands being given to teachers in lieu of salary. The younger states tended increasingly towards retention and leasing. Colorado, which was formed in 1876, still holds 62 percent of its original granted lands, with older states retaining as little as 3 percent and younger states as much as 91 percent. For the states that retained their granted land, leasing reflected the primary industries of the 19th and early 20th centuries—farming, grazing, logging, and mining.

Most states also developed a permanent fund to house trust land revenue (from sales and leasing), the earnings from which could be distributed to schools. Colorado was the first state required to do so. Over time, administration of these land grants evolved into, and has been interpreted by courts as constituting, formal trust arrangements, in which the state (the trustee) has the legal responsibility to manage the land and the permanent fund (the trust corpus) with undivided loyalty, good faith, skill, and diligence, for the benefit of public schools and other named institutions (the beneficiaries).

In Colorado, 95 percent of trust lands benefit K-12 education, with smaller grants supporting public buildings, the penitentiary, and state universities. Another pair of trusts, called the internal improvements and saline trusts, benefit the state park system. This pair of trusts includes land within 13 of Colorado’s state parks, for which the parks themselves are the beneficiaries but have to contract with the State Land Board to use. Samelson calls this situation “perhaps unduly complicated,” and it’s part of why he and others first got involved with HB 1332.

Across all Colorado state trust lands, leasing generated $230 million last year, with the permanent fund producing another $50 million in interest. About half that went back into growing the permanent fund and half went to the Department of Education’s Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) program. The program supports school construction and renovation, fixing things like boilers and roofs, particularly in rural Colorado where there is less of a tax base.

While many states, Colorado included, have at times taken their trust responsibility to mean maximizing revenue generation, this management strategy can be in tension with the duty to sustainably manage trust assets, such that they can continue to benefit future generations of schoolchildren in perpetuity. This tension came to a head in Colorado in 1996, when voters approved a constitutional amendment that asserts “that economic productivity of all lands held in public trust is dependent on sound stewardship, including protecting and enhancing the beauty, natural values, open space, and wildlife habitat thereof,” and instructs the board to manage state trust lands to “produce reasonable and consistent income over time.” Amendment 16 also created a 300,000-acre Stewardship Trust “to preserve the long-term benefits and returns to the state” by managing the lands specifically for their natural values.

The ballot measure was a sharp rebuke to the maximization-focused management of the time, which had led to a series of high-profile controversies around proposed uses of trust lands—including what would have been the nation’s largest commercial hog farm, sited along the South Platte River near billionaire Phil Anschutz’s hunting lodge.

Amendment 16 was accused of violating the trust mandate, but the courts ultimately found that encouraging “sound stewardship” and “reasonable and consistent income” was not corrupting the purpose of the State Land Board, but rather providing guidance on a management approach for achieving that purpose—one that upholds the long-term health of the trust.

As to the final question of why the founding fathers reserved the 16th section specifically, the Supreme Court justices write in Cooper v. Roberts that it was meant “to plant in the heart of every community…grateful reverence for the wisdom, forecast, and magnanimous statesmanship of those who framed the institutions for these new States.” It would also promote “good governance and the happiness of mankind by the spread of religion, morality, and knowledge.”

Apart from this largely symbolic gesture, it was likely just as good a method as any other to systematically grant largely unexplored land to unknown future states. It still can’t be called optimal—while states ended up with some land that was excellent for generating revenue to fund schools, they also had plenty that was steep and dry, lacking trees or minerals, or too far away from roads, rivers, and towns to be useful. Congress did give more land to the more arid states (two sections per township and then four), but the disparate value of granted lands, in addition to their small, scattered nature, has remained a challenge through centuries of trust land managers trying to meet their constitutional obligation. For most western states today, a small percentage of the granted sections generate the majority of revenue, while the rest produce more marginal incomes, or in some instances, no money at all.

But Rosmarino, the Colorado State Land Board director, says we have to be careful about using too broad a brush on the issue. The distribution of trust lands is an advantage, she says, for the opportunity it affords to build relationships all across the state, with local governments and lessees that live and work close to the land. Isolated sections can be integral parts of larger projects, from multigenerational ranches and farms to new, utility-scale renewable energy projects. They can also, with creative thinking, support “projects with a pretty small footprint that have provided big results financially for the State Land Board,” as well as the community and the environment, she says.

For example, a sale of 400 acres of state trust land surrounded by development in Erie yielded $40 million for the state’s permanent fund. In southeast Colorado, the City of Lamar plans to purchase electricity from a solar garden being built on 30 acres of trust land. And there is that quarter-acre lot in the middle of Denver with the affordable housing development that inspired Senator Roberts.

Colorado also hosts some of the West’s only ecosystem service leases on state trust land. In one case, when a water utility needed to offset the impact a new reservoir would have on the federally threatened Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, the State Land Board restored and enhanced 222 acres of habitat on state trust land. This created the state’s first species conservation bank, which has generated around $750,000. In another case, a 200-acre floodplain on the South Platte River became a wetland mitigation bank that offsets gravel mining elsewhere in the watershed. That lease has generated more than $2 million for Colorado’s schools, on a property that was appraised for less than $200,000. For both the jumping mouse and wetland mitigation projects, grazing was able to continue on most of the property.

These kinds of projects can turn the challenge of the checkerboard into an asset, says Mindy Gottsegen, the conservation services manager who developed and runs the State Land Board’s ecosystem services line of business. That’s because a diverse land base can mean access to diverse markets, and the State Land Board is continuously expanding its leasing program to take advantage of that dynamic.

Of course, legacy industries remain integral to Colorado’s school trust—96 percent of land is leased for farming and grazing, and 82 percent of revenue comes from mineral extraction, particularly oil and gas development. But, Gottsegen says, “We have areas of the state where we think there’s no oil and gas, and it’s very arid. Now all of a sudden, we know that there are big helium reserves there, and we have access to that because of the checkerboard pattern.” All it takes is for a new market to develop, and a property that didn’t seem like it had much to offer 30 years prior is suddenly worth a lot more.

Amendment 16’s intergenerational outlook helps preserve these kinds of opportunities. By dialing down the pressure for immediate, maximized return, the amendment allows managers to forego near-term development and keep their options open on any given parcel of land. And the emphasis on sound stewardship has provided fertile ground to explore leasing for things that preserve or enhance the value of land while still making money for the beneficiaries, like regenerative grazing and wildfire restoration for carbon credits, which Gottsegen is currently working on.

The founder of a land trust and a former advisor to the governor, Rosmarino sees her position, and these kinds of projects, as “a great convergence of my background in conservation and agriculture, and also my interest in being really entrepreneurial in generating revenue for a good cause.” That’s why she welcomes working with the State Trust Lands Conservation and Recreation Work Group, which was formed by the passage of HB 1332 last spring. “We really see it as an opportunity to showcase how innovative we are trying to be,” she says, adding that “creative solutions can come from anyone and anywhere.”

Senator Katie Wallace, who co-sponsored HB-1332 with Senator Roberts and Representative Karen McCormick, says that “the goal of the working group is to see how state trust lands can support conservation, climate resilience, biodiversity, and recreation, while still honoring and uplifting the duty to generate reliable revenue for our public schools.” The bill’s proponents hope it can provide support for the State Land Board’s existing efforts and inspire new projects, particularly by “pulling in a lot more voices from a lot of different perspectives,” says McCormick.

The State Land Board is “a pretty lean organization, and because of its small size and the sheer amount of land they have, a lot of times they end up having to be reactive to proposals coming from outside entities,” says Samelson. They have still managed to do some really exciting and creative work, says John Rader, who was part of the coalition that advocated for the bill, but “there hasn’t been a comprehensive, holistic approach that gathers stakeholder input,” he says.

So, the bill establishes what Wallace and McCormick both call a kind of mind trust, featuring 24 members representing the trust beneficiaries, agriculture, oil and gas, conservation, recreation, affordable housing, and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, as well as experts in economics, law, and real estate. “We kept adding seats to the working group,” says McCormick, “which tells you that folks saw the importance of having their voices in the mix.”

The group, which only just convened for the first time in October, is instructed to inventory state trust lands for their potential to support these various goals—for example by identifying parcels that contain habitat for Colorado’s species of great conservation concern—and to analyze the various tools and mechanisms available to achieve them—like conservation leases and land swaps. They will present their recommendations in an interim report by March 16 and a final report by September 1, 2026.

The idea, Samelson says, is to create space to have a proactive conversation “outside of the pressure cooker of the capitol dome,” where a wide variety of folks can mull over all the different options and available avenues “and come back with a package that, hopefully, has been thoroughly poked at from different angles.”

All the bill’s sponsors and proponents emphasize that the intent of the group is not to displace or discount legacy users of state trust lands, but rather to look in the margins of what’s already happening for new opportunities to make the whole corpus of trust lands work for the beneficiaries. “How do we look at those parts of the corpus that aren’t oil and gas, or agriculture?” asks Wallace.

Samelson, for example, is interested in what he calls inholdings and edgeholdings—those tricky 640-acre parcels that can be hard to manage on their own. Rader, who is the public lands program manager for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, is also interested in inholdings, particularly in nearby Lone Mesa State Park. “That’s our small window into state trust lands,” he says, “and from there the conversation just started ballooning outward.”

The twist with those Lone Mesa inholdings, and state trust land in 12 other Colorado state parks, is that they’re part of the land grant that was made to benefit the state park system. So, you end up with a weird situation “where Colorado Parks and Wildlife [which manages state parks] is both the lessee and the beneficiary,” says Rader. Since it doesn’t make sense for Parks and Wildlife to pay rent that would be given back to the agency, they enter into beneficial use agreements, often short term, where no money is exchanged. On the state parks side, “that doesn’t give us a lot of certainty about longterm management for conservation and recreation,” says Rader, “and it doesn’t generate a lot of revenue for the State Land Board, so it’s kind of this double inefficiency.”

Thinking about creative management solutions for the lands that benefit state parks is one of the working group’s first tasks. Also intended for the interim report is a look at the Stewardship Trust that arose from Amendment 16. The amendment “says that the lands are supposed to be managed to preserve and enhance their natural values,” says Rader, “but it doesn’t really define natural values. It doesn’t tell the state land board how to manage for them. It doesn’t say what uses are compatible or incompatible with those natural values.” He’s hoping the working group can define some terms and establish clearer procedures. Beyond those specific trusts, Rader just wants to know what’s out there in terms of creative uses of state trust land, particularly when it comes to making money while conserving the land.

It’s a timely conversation, in part because “we are in a really tough budget situation and we have been for a really long time,” according to Wallace, “and that makes any revenue stream absolutely irreplaceable.” But more than immediate need, everyone seemed to feel that this moment—150 years after Colorado first received its trust lands, and 30 years after Amendment 16 established the twin pillars of sound stewardship and reasonable and consistent income—was simply ripe for reflection.

“There hasn’t been a comprehensive look at how we are using our state trust lands in quite a long time,” says Roberts, “and the practical reality of our state is changing. We’re struggling with issues like housing and wanting to promote more outdoor recreation and protect the environment, and this is a chance to get some of the best and brightest minds together to look at the opportunities to maximize the value of every state trust land—not just the big parcels, but the small parcels too.”

Birch Malotky is the editor of Western Confluence magazine and writes from Laramie, Wyoming.

Header image: Lowry Ranch. (Raquel Wertsbaugh)

By Emily Downing

Every spring, Chris Williams looks forward to seeing the terns alight on the meadows of the southern Wyoming ranch that he manages. It’s a fleeting sight—the birds are there for one day and then they’re gone, off to breeding grounds further north. However brief, the terns’ stopover on the ZN Ranch is an essential part of their migratory journey, as it is for the dozens of other species Williams sees every year.

“We provide this edge of green right in the middle of the sagebrush, which is important for a lot of animals,” Williams says. “Our irrigation isn’t just about waterfowl and wading birds, but it’s that edge habitat that supports deer, elk, antelope, sage grouse—all of it.” 

The ZN Ranch, like most other ranching operations in the Upper North Platte watershed, relies on a system of dirt ditches dug by hand in the 1880s to sustain that edge of green. In the spring, when tributary creeks are running high, the ditches divert water and spread it over the floodplain to grow lush grass that will be cut for hay. In the face of a drying western climate, ranching operations that use flood irrigation to grow food for livestock have come under fire for taking too much water out of streams and rivers. But new research is showing that flood irrigation in certain places does so much more than grow hay—it might just be the glue holding western ecosystems together. 

As the West’s water resources are stretched thin, policymakers and the public are calling for increased irrigation efficiency on agricultural land to reduce one of the highest demands on water in the West.  The reasoning goes that flood irrigation—where water is spread out over a field and left to slowly saturate the soil—is inefficient because much of the water that’s diverted is “lost” to seepage and evaporation, rather than directly supporting growing plants. Conversion to center-pivot sprinklers, lined canals, and other irrigation methods intends to minimize these losses while ensuring as much water as possible goes to crop production. As a result, federal programs that fund irrigation infrastructure upgrades are prioritizing the conversion to drip or pivot sprinkler irrigation systems. 

But this calculated way of thinking about crop production doesn’t account for the interconnected pathways that water follows as it moves through a healthy watershed, supporting aquifers, fisheries, and wildlife along the way. Specifically, flood irrigation that happens along historic river floodplains can provide a slew of benefits beyond agricultural yields.  

Before rivers became highly regulated and channelized, floodplain meadows served as sponges, soaking up the spring runoff that topped the creek’s banks. Beaver dams and other diversions slowed the fast-moving snowmelt, spreading it over low-lying meadows and saturating everything. The flooding formed temporary wetlands that provided habitat for migratory waterbirds and food for big game animals. Later in the season, when river flows were low, water that wasn’t absorbed by the plants growing along the floodplain returned to the waterway’s main channel, helping keep it flowing and functional. 

Today, the dirt ditches used by Williams and his neighbors along the banks of Pass Creek mimic these natural flooding cycles, sustaining ribbons of green that provide outsized value for wildlife and human communities. A 2024 study published in Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment found that although flood-irrigated floodplain meadows are only 2.5 percent of the Intermountain West’s irrigated footprint, they provide 58 percent of the region’s temporary wetlands (shallow wetlands that exist for fewer than two months each year) and 20 percent of seasonal wetlands (wetlands that remain wet between two and six months each year).  

Both wetland types are needed by waterbirds and waterfowl at different stages of their lifecycle, from nesting and breeding to fueling up during migration. Patrick Donnelly, a spatial ecologist for the Intermountain West Joint Venture and the US Fish and Wildlife Service who led the research, says that without flood irrigation practices, many of these wetlands would vanish, creating massive habitat gaps for migratory birds. (Disclosure: the author is employed by Intermountain West Joint Venture.) 

“These sites are often invaluable because they’re putting water in the right place at the right time of year to provide the right kind of habitat for the birds moving through the area,” Donnelly says. “When they dry up, due to infrastructure conversion or maybe even the loss of the agricultural operation to development, the flyway becomes increasingly fragile.” 

Emerging research also suggests that flood irrigation can provide other benefits by saturating soils and feeding groundwater supplies, although there is still much to learn about how surface and groundwater are connected. Frontiers in Environmental Science recently published one such study on the Henry’s Fork River in Eastern Idaho, an important fishery at the headwaters of the Snake River. 

Christina Morrisett, the lead author of the research, says that from 1978 to 2000, many agricultural producers along the Henry’s Fork converted from flood irrigation to pivot infrastructure. As expected, surface water diversion from the river decreased by 23 percent over those years, meaning operators were taking less water out of the river. However, return flows to the river also decreased significantly. That’s because when irrigators change to a system that sprinkles or drips small amounts of water onto crops, it waters the crops and nothing else. “You’re probably not putting anything back into the system,” says Morrisett. The end result was that there was less water in the river after the conversion than there had been before.  

In contrast, Williams points out that the irrigation water he uses is recycled multiple times as it moves downstream. After helping plants grow, the “excess” water from flood irrigation infiltrates the earth and can make its way back to the river, creek, or aquifer and continue downstream for future uses. “My upstream neighbors turn it out and put it on their fields and then it goes back into the creek and I’ll pick it up and irrigate with it again and again,” he says. “That water will get used four or five times before getting back to the creek.” 

Morrisett says that’s one reason why operations located higher up in watersheds might be the most important places to maintain traditional flood irrigation practices. There, irrigated meadows in the floodplain can soak up and slowly release water for wildlife and downstream users across the growing season. “Water flows downstream, so whatever isn’t used high up can be recycled by someone else,” she says.  

As communities of the West make difficult decisions about water, science that pinpoints where irrigation provides multiple ecosystem services will be increasingly helpful. Further research into how water moves through watersheds and affects groundwater supplies and aquifers—and how human actions influence both of those things—will also be important. 

In the meantime, supporting farmers and ranchers like Williams who use flood irrigation high in the watershed is ​​​​an easy way to bolster resilience and preserve critical habitat in the West. Funding federal and state programs that enable producers to continue doing what they’re already doing, on a relatively small percentage of private land, will have outsized impacts on preserving watershed function—and key habitat—in the places where it counts. That way, the terns (and the sandhill cranes, the warblers, the mule deer, the pronghorn, and the elk) have somewhere to return to next spring, and all the springs in the future. 

Emily Downing is the Water 4 Communications Specialist for the Intermountain West Joint Venture, a regional public-private partnership that conserves habitat for the benefit of priority bird species, other wildlife, and people. Her role involves producing media that tells the story of emergent wetland habitats on public and private lands in the Intermountain West. In her free time, she is outside with her husband and dogs exploring the mountains and sagebrush around their home in Polaris, Montana. 

Header image: A field in Utah’s Upper Bear River Watershed is flood-irrigated to produce grass hay. Flood irrigation in historic floodplains higher in watersheds can create a sponge effect that slowly releases water back into the waterway over the course of a growing season. (Intermountain West Joint Venture)

By Isabella Sadler

In October 2019 and 2020, helicopters hovered above the pristine waters of Yellowstone Lake, surrounded by an autumn landscape of yellowing aspen trees. The helicopters carried a weight equivalent to 14 small cars—17,000 kilograms of circular, brown pellets—which they released near a small, rocky island in the lake’s West Thumb. The pellets rained down, sinking to the lake’s bottom, where managers hoped they would suppress the thousands of invasive lake trout born in Yellowstone Lake annually. Years in the making, this novel technique targets a life stage that past efforts have been unsuccessful at controlling, and shows promise as an effective, low-cost way to eradicate invasive fish.

Yellowstone Lake is home to the largest population of genetically pure Yellowstone cutthroat trout, a spotted, golden-colored trout native to the western US. This culturally and ecologically significant fish attracts anglers from across the country and serves as a valuable food source for many land mammals and birds in the area. But lake trout—an invasive, predatory trout species first discovered in Yellowstone Lake in 1994—threaten cutthroat trout and the animals that rely on them.

Lake trout eat cutthroat, which led to a severe decline in the cutthroat population after the lake trout population expanded. Lake trout also do not occupy the same ecological role as cutthroat, which has implications for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as a whole. Cutthroat are medium-bodied trout that reproduce in streams connected to Yellowstone Lake, making them available as food sources for many land animals that pass by streams. Lake trout, however, are much larger and do not access the streams, making it nearly impossible for land predators to catch them. Because of this, fewer cutthroat means less food for brown bears, black bears, eagles, osprey, and more.

To combat this problem, the National Park Service fisheries program began removing lake trout in 1995 with gillnets, which are large nets that entangle fish as they attempt to swim through. While lake trout numbers in Yellowstone Lake have decreased since 2012, the invasive trout persist in large numbers and pose a substantial threat to the cutthroat. In addition, gillnetting is very expensive, and young fish, typically two years old and below, are small enough to slip through the gillnets.

Thus, park service biologists sought methods to kill young lake trout before and just after they’ve hatched. To do this, they targeted where lake trout lay their eggs, attempting to make these spawning grounds inhospitable to the developing fish. After years of research, they developed pellets that mimic the way a decomposing lake trout carcass removes oxygen from the water. Releasing these organic, “carcass-analog” pellets in the water around the spawning grounds reduces oxygen concentrations to lethal levels, smothering lake trout eggs. This only harms the lake trout young because cutthroat spawn in streams far away from Yellowstone Lake.

It’s also cost-effective. More than $2 million is spent gillnetting lake trout in Yellowstone Lake each year, while it’s estimated that applying pellet treatments to all known spawning sites would cost just $250,000 annually. Gillnetting would still be needed to target adult lake trout, but fewer fish hatching each year would slow their reproduction and reduce overall costs.

Park biologists piloted this new method in 2019 and 2020, dropping the pellets on Carrington Island spawning reef. In the two years following pellet treatments, biologists didn’t catch a single lake trout hatchling in traps surrounding Carrington Island, implying that nearly 100% of lake trout eggs died at this location. While these results are very promising for controlling young fish, Carrington Island is just one of 14 known spawning sites in Yellowstone Lake. Researchers do not yet know how suppressing hatchlings at one site will impact the lake-wide invasive trout population and would need to treat more spawning locations to determine the pellets’ overall efficiency and impact on the lake trout.

Biologists must also consider potential negative side effects of this treatment. Two studies are currently evaluating the effect of pellet treatments on Yellowstone Lake. One project collects tissue samples of algae, zooplankton, macroinvertebrates, and fish to measure the extent to which pellets are incorporated into the food web. The other project evaluates the impacts of pellet treatments on water quality and nutrient dynamics. Because pellets contain nitrogen and phosphorus—nutrients that can stimulate the growth of algae—there is a chance that the pellets reduce water quality and affect other organisms in the lake. While they don’t expect unintended effects, biologists want to be certain before expanding the treatment to more spawning sites.

Overall, Yellowstone National Park is moving forward with cautious optimism. The cutthroat trout population has greatly recovered due to these efforts, but lake trout control will need to continue into the foreseeable future. Carrington Island will be treated again in autumn 2024 and 2025, and the pellets’ initial success has inspired further development and research. Not only is this new method a milestone in the park’s 30-year battle against lake trout, but the work in Yellowstone Lake is paving the way for management in other large, deep lakes where controlling invasive species has been extremely difficult.

Isabella Sadler is a PhD student in the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming. Her research interests involve how invasive species and disturbance alter freshwater ecosystems.

Header Image: The angular rock surrounding Carrington Island in the West Thumb is prime lake trout spawning habitat in Yellowstone Lake (Koel et al., CC BY 4.0).

By Tesia Lin

In 2014, John Coffman arrived in Wyoming as The Nature Conservancy’s new steward for the Red Canyon Ranch and quickly encountered an unforgettable lesson. “We were trying to figure ourselves out on some new country and trying to make sure we were on top of getting the hay meadows irrigated. An intern was having trouble with a beaver plugging a headgate,” he says, preventing water from getting to the fields. They opted to get rid of the pesky beaver, as agricultural operations have done for a long time.

The following year, high spring flows washed away bridges and crossings from the fields, forcing Coffman and his team to restore irrigation ditches and pipes, a resource-intensive process. In a different part of the ranch, however, a stream system that still had beavers showed more resilience to the spring flows. “Instead of those streams eroding away, the [beaver] ponds slowed everything down,” says Coffman. “The ponds filled with sediment and are now growing willows and lush grasses.”

Seven years later, during a mid-July visit, Coffman showed me this historic beaver complex, still thriving after those floods. For twenty feet on either side of the stream, floodplains were green with grasses, willows, goldfinches, and a rattlesnake we were lucky to hear first. Coffman chuckled; he had cautioned me earlier that they’re after the rodents abundant in the area. Four beaver dams bridged deep, still ponds. The beavers built with no regard for clean, neat lines or straight waterways—challenging my understanding of what streams should look like.

After the consequential floods in the spring of 2015, Coffman says, “We came to the observation that there were some serious benefits to having beaver dams and beavers in place.” This beaver complex serves as a model for the conditions that he hopes to restore several streams to. Across an increasingly parched and degraded West, land managers and researchers seeking effective and efficient water management solutions may benefit from the same realization. Perhaps, it’s time to end recent antagonism against beavers and instead form an alliance with nature’s most effective, once prolific waterway engineers.

“None of us in our lifetimes have seen how common beavers would have been,” says Niall Clancy, a PhD student at the University of Wyoming surveying fish diversity in beaver ponds. Before the arrival of Western settlers in the early 1800s, there were as many as four hundred million beavers in America, creating wetland mosaics that covered almost three hundred thousand square miles of land in serene greens and glittering blues. Beavers dam up slower streams to form deep moats around their homes, creating refuges not only for themselves, but also for plants and animals that rely on, and co-evolved with, these dam structures. Series of dams spawn floodplains, wetlands, and ponds—so called “beaver complexes.” Sheltered pools of standing water provide safety for young fish, invertebrates, and amphibians. They are also havens for threatened or rare birds, like sandhill cranes. “The more complex the types of habitats you have, the more types of wildlife you can support,” Clancy says. “Messiness is good in ecology.”

Messy can also be how land looks when humans are stewards. “When we think of the past, we need to add Indigenous people,” says Rosalyn LaPier, faculty in the history department at the University of Illinois and enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana and Métis. “When the first settlers arrive in the West, what they are seeing are these ecosystems that have co-evolved with plants, animals, and humans.” To survive in water-limited environments, Indigenous communities living between the plains and Rocky Mountains studied and manipulated natural processes. LaPier says that they managed beaver populations to manage water; beaver ponds provided a water source for Native peoples as well as the animals they hunted. Beavers were so important that the Blackfeet considered them sacred and divine. Thus, humans developed a close, symbiotic existence with beavers and their natural worlds.

Western expansion upset this balance. As settlers introduced new diseases and deforestation, they also introduced the concept that waterways were most efficiently managed if they were linear, unobstructed, and moved large quantities of water. They diverted rivers and streams into deep irrigation ditches and killed beavers where they interfered, declaring them pests. Coupled with overharvesting for the global fur trade, human pressure nearly extinguished beavers and the ecosystems they maintained by 1900. Of the floodplains and wetlands that once existed across North America, less than ten percent remain today.

In their places are thousands of miles of down-cut streams like the ones that caused Coffman and his team so much trouble a few years back. In straight, unobstructed waterways, controlling transportation to agricultural fields is the main objective. The force of water travelling quickly does not allow water to collect in the soil or for nutritious sediment to be deposited, so incised banks become unable to support plant life. Without roots to hold the banks together, exposed soil dries and crumbles in the heat of summer, eroding the streambanks. Braided stream systems shrink to a single water channel, drying the surrounding land. This cycle eats away at floodplains and wetlands, which otherwise accumulate nutritious sediment, retain water underground (resisting evaporation), and promote biodiversity. With nature’s “sponges” gone, water and nutrients wash out to the ocean, leaving behind arid land and lost habitat.

Reconnecting waterways, reducing erosion, and replenishing groundwater is difficult and expensive. When I asked Coffman about solutions for managing and retaining water on Red Canyon Ranch, he emphasized the hefty costs of bringing heavy machinery and hiring engineers and landscape architects. Such disruption could also set back ecological processes, displacing invertebrates, mammals, and birds alike. The integrity of the ecosystem could take years to recover. Not to mention the challenge of maintaining such an elaborate construction when faced with the unpredictable nature of rivers and streams, which change their courses over time. All in the hope of mimicking the effortless effects of floodplains and wetlands.

Nationally, hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated toward the labor and materials required to develop water resiliency projects in the West alone. These interagency developments prioritize the storage and protection of water in reservoirs and groundwater, as well as the restoration of wetlands and waterways. Though this large sum recognizes the importance of restoring ecosystems, humans cannot accurately replicate natural processes.

“What [modern] restoration practice has done is borrow from empirical observations and produce average conditions. We are crap at designing for variability and complexity,” explains Joe Wheaton, an ex-civil engineer studying nature’s engineers at Utah State University. Nature, he says, does not adhere to averages but is rather unpredictable. The movement of water and how streams change course are challenges that researchers and engineers cannot account for. Unlike scientists, though, beavers instinctually adapt to and engage with the changing courses of water. They foster jigsaw ecosystems, supporting critters that are co-dependent on one another in ways that scientists often overlook and would be hard-pressed to reproduce.  That makes beavers cost-effective tools for maintaining and helping manage the natural water systems that so many people, industries, plants, and animals rely on. For Wheaton, beavers are tools of restoration that engage natural processes, balancing the “mismatch between effort and scope of problem.”

In the most degraded waterways, beavers and their accompanying biodiversity will not return on their own, but we know how to entice them. Clancy’s team facilitates the return of beavers by installing beaver dam analogs, commonly called BDAs). He and his collaborators strategically select for where a beaver’s work is required, targeting heavily eroded streams devoid of life and too deep for cattle to cross. Spanning the width of these channels, they weave sticks and logs, and pack mud to mimic dams. These barriers slow the force of water as it moves downstream while creating pools, the goal being to create a habitat appealing to beavers. Should beavers move in, they build upon and maintain these structures without need for human labor and constant surveillance.

While the implementation of beaver dam analogs and encouragement of beaver repopulation outpaces the research, many initial results have been positive. In places where beavers have been reintroduced, ranchers and researchers alike have seen streams flowing anywhere from an extra week to an extra month. Beaver restoration can also replenish groundwater, often a key source for municipal water use. Meanwhile, burying plant materials during the damming process sequesters carbon, preventing it from entering the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. And in some once-degraded sites where beavers have been successfully introduced, their restoration effectively increased the variety of habitats and the abundance of critters they could support.

Exploring a symbiotic relationship with beavers is still a new but growing practice that has not been without challenges. Coffman says, “Since that situation years ago, we got beavers back creating messes: damming up ditches, plugging up headgates. But we’re trying to approach it a lot differently now.” Rather than treating beavers like nuisances, his management approach centers around the balanced relationship between beavers and stewards. Like Clancy, he is installing beaver dam analogs throughout streams on the ranch—a project that started with five and expanded to over forty structures. Though there are headgates and irrigation ditches where damming is undesirable, Coffman still allows beavers to exist under his watchful eye. After all, early dams can be dug out and individuals relocated—but beavers’ effectiveness in retaining water and restoring floodplains cannot be replicated.

Beavers may not be the ultimate clean-cut solution for our water resource problems. Messy, multi-faceted tools, they challenge the modern concept of controlling water. But researchers and land managers alike have found that nurturing an alliance with beavers, adapting to their activities, and integrating science with natural processes—the way Indigenous peoples have—can help build resiliency in the face of dynamic environmental challenges.

Tesia Lin is a master’s student at the University of Wyoming characterizing pathogens in bighorn sheep pneumonia. She hopes to pursue a career which encourages interdisciplinary and intercultural research at the forefront of ecology and conservation. This story was supported by a grant through Wyoming EPSCoR and the National Science Foundation. 

By Randy Rea

The Yampa River Basin is in trouble. Revered for its wild and unencumbered nature, the Yampa River starts high in the Flat Tops Wilderness at around 12,000 feet, flows down through the resort town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and meanders westward roughly two hundred and fifty miles to its confluence with the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. It has mostly avoided major damming, making it a prized river for recreation, including fishing, white water rafting, kayaking, and more. The Yampa River also serves as a critical water source for industries like ranching, farming, and energy generation. Historically, the Yampa’s annual flows have been sufficient to satisfy all its users, but a twenty-two-year megadrought exacerbated by climate change has left the West drier than any time in the last 1,200 years. With temperatures increasing, snowpack decreasing, and soil moisture plummeting, people and industries reliant on the Yampa have had their headgates shut and their river rafts forced ashore.

Simultaneously, plans to close two coal-fired power plants in the Yampa River Basin have moved forward. In the face of growing political, social, and economic pressures, utility companies like Tri-State Energy Generation and Xcel Energy are making hard decisions to transition their energy generation portfolios away from coal and toward renewable assets. Over the next eight years, Craig Station and Hayden Station, stalwart employers of rural northwest Colorado, will systematically retire their power units. While these retirements will undoubtedly have a drastic impact on the rural communities whose citizens work at the power plants (and the local coal mines that provide the coal), the closures present an unprecedented opportunity for creative solutions to both water shortages and economic hardship in the Yampa River Basin.

While pursuing a joint law and master’s degree at the University of Wyoming College of Law and Haub School of Environment & Natural Resources, I have taken a hard look at the Yampa River and how Colorado water law can be used to bolster its stream flow and offer auxiliary benefits to local communities. The way I see it, the Yampa River Basin has two problems: first, it is losing its largest employers and bedrock economic industry; second, its river and riparian ecosystem is deteriorating rapidly. Coincidentally, the first problem may offer a solution to the second. These large, industrial employers consume tremendous volumes of Yampa River water, and soon will no longer need it. So how can the Yampa River make a comeback? How can the water that supported the energy industry for over fifty years be repurposed to support an evolving rural community and the environment? One possible answer is by transferring water rights from these coal-fired power plants back to the state in the form of instream-flow water rights.

Legally, a water right is a type of property right; you own the right to use the water like you own the right to use a piece of land. Collectively, Craig and Hayden station have water rights to consume approximately 21,000 acre-feet of water for energy generation each year. A single acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons and, for comparison, the entire city of Steamboat Springs consumes approximately 3,000 acre-feet of treated water annually. Colorado’s rivers and streams are governed by the prior appropriation doctrine, two pillars of which are “beneficial use” and “temporal priority.” Water rights are only legally recognized for certain, specified types of use that are considered “beneficial” (for example irrigation) and it matters when they are first granted. A common catch phrase for prior appropriation is, “first in time, first in right.” This means those who obtain a water right before others will have senior priority to the water. Craig Station’s water right dates back in priority to 1951; Hayden Station holds a very senior water right with a priority date of 1897. These senior water rights have more bite than a simple decree on paper. If a river’s flow is so diminished that there is less water in the river than there are water rights to fulfill, like the Yampa River today, the state will begin administering water diversions based on priority dates. Thus, senior water right holders will be able to divert and use their entire allotment of water before junior appropriators may take any water out of the river. It pays to be first.

Interestingly, a water right is not exclusive to out-of-stream water users. Colorado is a leader in the West for a legal concept called “instream-flow water rights.” Instream-flow rights grant a property right to the environment, meaning the state can designate a particular stream segment with a minimum volume of stream flow and attach a water right to it. Just like any other appropriator on a stream, an instream-flow water right is a legally protected property interest and subject to the same priority administration in times of low flow. Instream-flow water rights are unique because they expand the definition of “beneficial use” beyond diversion, to include keeping water in the stream for environmental conservation. The General Assembly first authorized the Colorado Water Conservation Board to appropriate water rights for instream-flows in 1973, in order to protect the environment and conserve waters of the state. Since passing the Instream Flow Act, Colorado has protected 1,684 stream segments covering 9,720 miles of stream and 482 natural lakes.

For the Yampa River, an instream-flow water right could not only protect the river but also maintain the necessary water levels for four native fish species listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, bonytail chub, and humpback chub. Punctuated by rushing, high-flow snowmelt from April to June, the Yampa River distributes nutrients and sediment and physically rearranges cobble bars and river banks, making suitable eddies and channels for spawning and rearing young fish. These type of flows make the Yampa one of the most important tributaries in the Upper Colorado River Basin for the recovery of these species. When flows are reduced, cascading effects disturb and diminish important recovery habitat.

Meanwhile, the rural communities along the Yampa River’s banks are set for a large economic down-turn. In Craig, Tri-State Energy Generation and Colowyo provide over $9 million in tax revenue and hundreds of high-paying jobs to the local residents. These business work in unison; Colowyo coal mine provides the coal that Tri-State burns to generate electricity. The tax revenues they provide are critical to support the school district, fire district, and other Moffat County municipal government functions, but when Craig Station shuts down, so too goes the tax revenue. While Tri-State is making significant investments in the community to aid in the transition, few things can replace such a singularly important economic pillar. More than likely, these towns will need to rely at least in part on the Yampa River and the intrinsic value of their natural landscapes to draw recreation tourism and community investments. An instream-flow water right on the Yampa could protect the area’s natural value and preserve the conditions needed for recreation like rafting, fishing, and kayaking.

So, how would it work? The Colorado instream-flow statutes establish clear and flexible options for transferring water rights for environmental purposes. While all instream-flow rights must be administered by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Colorado Water Trust (CWT) is a statewide non-profit dedicated to ushering transfers of existing water rights back to the environment. In over twenty years the CWT has restored 13.5 billion gallons of water to 588 miles of rivers and streams throughout the state and, if this option lifts off, the CWT could take the lead. A permanent water right transfer requires a formal application to the Colorado water court and the CWT is versed in making transitions seamless.

Even if the details of a formal transfer could not be worked out by the time the plants officially shutdown, Colorado statutes allow for temporary, informal transfers through water right leases. This option could allow the stakeholders of each plant to generate revenue to aid in the transition process and provide vast volumes of water back to the Yampa during the lease, while continuing to weigh their long-term options.

While a transfer of water rights to instream-flows would provide a windfall of needed water to the Yampa, it may not be the most likely of options. First is the issue of funding. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is earmarked an annual budget of $1 million to acquire new instream-flow water rights, but it is not enough to complete an unprecedented, bona fide purchase of the Craig and Hayden Station water rights, which are potentially worth more than $100 million. An upfront purchase would require alternative funding sources, such as Great Outdoors Colorado, the Colorado Conservation Trust Fund, non-profits dedicated to the conservation of rivers, or additional Colorado General Assembly appropriations.

Additionally, there are many other competing entities for water in the region, like Colorado’s front range cities. Pumping water from the Yampa back over the Continental Divide has been proposed before and fought down multiple times. However, with the front range’s ever-growing demand, this may be an inevitable solution to quenching the greater Denver metro area. Another viable option would be for the Hayden and Craig Station owners to sell and transfer their water rights to another entity in the energy industry, like nuclear or hydrogen energy generation. These forms of energy generation technology are gaining steam in the region and require just as much water as coal-based energy generation. While these options may serve economic purposes for each plant’s respective stakeholders, they fail to recognize the Yampa River is dying for more water.

The West is in an unprecedented time. Water, not only in the Yampa River Basin, but also the broader Colorado River Basin, is in severe decline and every drop counts. Because no person can create more water, we must be willing to think outside of the box as to how water is divvied up. While it might be a long-shot, the retirement of coal-fired power plants possessing massive water rights provides such an opportunity. Craig Station and Hayden Station are just two of several coal-fired power plants in the Colorado River Basin facing retirement, and can serve as important case studies to alleviate the pressures on the very rivers and streams they have relied on for decades. The Yampa provided water to make their businesses possible, perhaps it is just to return that water at a time when the river desperately needs it.

Randy Rea is life-long admirer of the Colorado River. Growing up in the lower basin he vacationed just above Imperial Dam; now living in the upper basin, he has developed a passion for the river’s headwaters. Randy holds a J.D. and M.A. from the University of Wyoming with a focus on water law and water right transfers.

It’s a hot, sunny day in early April, and I’m out collecting GPS coordinates for stands of wetland vegetation in the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The heat is suffocating on the swampy mudflats, but the gulls and avocets don’t seem to mind as they forage in the shallow water for brine fly larvae and other invertebrate goodies. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, until I look west and spy an ominous wall of smoke about a mile away. While smoke may be cause for concern in other managed wetlands, controlled burning is an important management technique at the Great Salt Lake. Though local air quality restrictions and wind patterns do not allow burning often, it is the most effective method for culling the unwanted invader, Phragmites australis.

Phragmites, or “phrag” as it is commonly called, is a prolific wetland plant that grows in dense monocultures up to 15 feet high. While one subspecies of phragmites is native to Utah, an introduced, more pervasive European lineage causes land managers much more anxiety than its well-behaved native counterpart. Nonnative phragmites is despised for many reasons, including its penchant for clogging waterways, disorienting and trapping hunters within its fibrous walls, and displacing native vegetation and critical bird habitat. Its capacity to quickly populate barren patches of soil has caused a major headache for wetland managers around the Great Salt Lake and across North America.

In 1983, severe flooding caused the Great Salt Lake level to rise dramatically. The briny lake water stripped most of the established vegetation away and left bare earth behind once the water receded. The invasive European strain of phragmites is a disturbance specialist. As such, in the mid to late 1980s it spread like wildfire across the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake, encroaching wherever bare soil or shallow freshwater was found. Today, European phragmites has carpeted 24,000 acres of the eastern shore, which is almost 38 square miles altogether. Phragmites control now commands the bulk of wetland managers’ resources, including both time and money.

Since 2015, the management agency that manages the lakebed—the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands—has annually requested funds to manage the spread of phragmites around the Great Salt Lake. In 2019, they applied for $500,000 to treat just under 6,300 acres of invaded land, only about a quarter of the total impacted area. But, as a new study out of professor Karin Kettenring’s Wetland Ecology and Restoration Lab at Utah State University shows, successfully removing phragmites requires at least three consecutive years of repeated treatments, ongoing spot treatments of new satellite colonies, and the restoration of previously invaded areas back to native habitat. Given that managers simply do not have enough money or manpower to treat the entire phragmites-invaded area each year, how do they decide where to target their efforts? They require a methodical, data-supported process for determining where their limited management efforts will best contain phragmites and protect the remaining native wetlands.

As a graduate student at Utah State University in the Wetland Ecology and Restoration Lab, I learned about the difficulties facing wetland managers, especially in regards to justifying funding requests to contain the spread of invasive phragmites and to ensure the successful restoration of native habitat. This uphill battle may seem futile to potential funding agencies and organizations, especially without any guarantee that what land managers accomplish this year will persist through the next growing season. After talking to several land managers, I realized I could design a research project to help them address the disparity between their goals and the available resources while limiting the risk of failure for restoration projects. This research would give funders greater confidence in management actions and increase their likelihood to provide resources.

After much discussion with land managers and my thesis committee, I decided to use an approach known as systematic landscape planning to tackle this issue. Systematic landscape planning addresses conservation planning problems by identifying areas within a landscape that together meet management goals while limiting management cost and risk of failure of management actions. I decided to use the software Marxan, because it is the most widely used systematic landscape planning software in the world. It is open-source, highly customizable, easy to employ, and can process a wide variety of spatial data inputs. Marxan optimizes the selection of planning units—in this project, areas to guard against phragmites—to meet set conservation targets, like protecting bird habitat, while minimizing the management cost and risk of phragmites taking over an area. The ultimate goal for this project is to create a spatial plan-of-attack that will attain the desired goals on the landscape for the least amount of management resources and with the greatest potential for successful implementation.

To employ a Marxan optimization solution to this problem, several spatial data elements were needed, including a gridded representation of the study area, a valuation of risk associated with phragmites, management costs, and conservation targets. To create such layers, I developed cost data in accordance with local managers’ knowledge of phragmites control and water management. Next, I subdivided the study area into 1-hectare units, which is a manageable scale for local crews, yet still large enough to be impactful on the landscape. I created the risk layer by employing machine learning algorithms to classify aerial imagery into likely locations of specific wetland plant species. I then used an ecological niche model and landscape data, such as where phragmites is currently found, distance to water, and distance to disturbance, to model phragmites invasion potential across the study areas.

I then developed conservation targets with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy—the two agencies managing these study areas. They were primarily concerned with migratory bird habitat and other ecological functions performed by wetland vegetation, such as soil carbon sequestration, heavy metal retention, and above-ground biomass. I spatially modeled these and several other ecological functions and am using them as the conservation target inputs. Marxan will run each scenario millions of times to generate a near-perfect network of planning units that meet the set targets for the least amount of cost and risk. Marxan accomplishes this objective by randomly selecting planning units until all conservation targets are met for each run. If the new run creates a management plan with less risk and cost than the previous run, it will select the new run as the “current best” and move onto the next run. It runs these random scenarios millions of times so you end up with a management plan with the lowest risk and cost based solely on data inputs. Marxan can also show the user which units were selected the most and least often. The units selected most often are critical to meet set targets while those rarely or never selected are not likely to provide much benefit. While I am still finalizing my modeled conservation targets, I expect to complete this project by fall of 2020. Through this process, I will show wetland managers which planning units they should treat given their limited resources to best meet their conservation targets while reducing the risk of phragmites undoing their on-the-ground work.

The methods developed in this study are transferable to other areas facing similar issues with invasive species, especially invasive plants. As long as land managers and planners can identify areas that are suitable to an invasive species (whether that is through mapping, using a species distribution model, or any other method), they can use the risk-aversion aspect of systematic landscape planning with Marxan to optimize their choice of treatment areas on a landscape. The other layers—cost data, a gridded study area, and conservation target data—can be as simple or complex as the project requires. This method could be used to plan treatments for other problem species in the West including purple loosestrife, cheatgrass, tamarisk, Russian olive, or other areas impacted by the dreaded phragmites. This tool can help land managers like the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, National Park Service, and state agencies address the daunting task of invasive species control, which is an ever-growing nuisance in the West.

When hard decisions must be made concerning where to allocate limited resources, managers and planners can use systematic landscape planning to create a defendable management plan based on data rather than relying solely on expert or stakeholder opinion. Systematic landscape planning provides a comprehensive and transparent method for prioritizing management efforts where location information or management resources are limited and prudent decisions are required. As phragmites continues its march across Great Salt Lake wetlands and other parts of North America, managers employing this approach will have an advantage in the never-ending battle against its far-reaching roots and shoots.

Text and photos by Aubin Douglas

Aubin Douglas is a Cartography and GIS Fellow at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Lakewood, Colorado. She is concurrently completing her second MS in the Ecology Center and Watershed Sciences Department at Utah State University. Visit karinkettenring.com to find out more about the Wetland Ecology and Restoration Lab at Utah State University.

Stepping through the tall grass, a family made their way to the edge of Kelly Warm Spring, a geothermal spring with a temperature that hovers around 77 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, in Grand Teton National Park. A young child carefully held a small bucket containing his first pet: a goldfish. The family was moving and didn’t want to bring it with them. At the water’s edge, the boy knelt down and slowly dunked the container, letting the fish swim away. After a tearful wave goodbye, the family returned to their car and drove back to the highway, relieved they had found a place for the fish to live out its life. What they didn’t know was that they were breaking both Wyoming state law and National Park Service regulations and contributing to an invasive species catastrophe.

And they aren’t alone. According to Grand Teton National Park spokesperson Denise Germann, people have dumped aquarium fish in Kelly Warm Spring since the 1960s. The spring is so enticing because its warm temperature offers a better chance of survival than other waterways.

Many warm water and tropical species have survived in Kelly Warm Spring, including goldfish, koi, tadpole mad toms, swordtails, guppies, and convict cichlids, along with red rimmed melania snails and American bullfrogs. They threaten native species like native Utah chubs, redside shiners, longnose dace, and speckled dace as well as those downstream—like Snake River cutthroat trout and bluehead suckers.

“The native species are pretty rare now in Kelly Warm Spring, and I think that’s direct and indirect competition and predation as well,” says Grand Teton National Park fisheries biologist Chad Whaley. “We also see a suite of pathogens and diseases that we wouldn’t typically see in Wyoming waters, and those are likely associated with the aquarium [fish].”

Scientists found “popeye,” an infection which causes fishes’ eyes to bulge, along with tapeworms, yellow grubs, salmonella, E. coli in excess of EPA limits, and evidence of naegleria fowleri, also known as “brain eating amoebas.”

When the family released their goldfish into the waters of Kelly Warm Spring, they weren’t thinking about how it could grow and outcompete native species, spread pathogens, or harm the ecosystem. They just wanted the fish to have a chance at survival. And they’re not the only ones to unleash an unwanted pet on an ecosystem. Exotic pets released into the wild are a concern throughout the country and beyond.

“I would say it’s a monstrous problem really,” says Leah Elwell, executive director for the Invasive Species Action Network. “In this day of being able to purchase whatever you want online it can be really easy to buy whatever [pet] you’re interested in internationally.”

Elwell’s organization educates everyone from school kids to pet store owners about the importance of not releasing unwanted pets into the wild through the “Don’t Let It Loose” campaign. “Our mission is to promote behavior change that helps prevent the spread of invasive species,” Elwell says.

She says many people don’t know certain animals, such as bullfrogs, may be illegal to own, even though they are easy to obtain. And people don’t understand the threats those animals pose to native ecosystems.

With abandoned pets thriving in the warm waters of Kelly Warm Spring—despite the fact releasing them is a Class B misdemeanor with penalties of up to $5,000 in fines and/or six months of jail time—managers wanted to take action before these animals spread even further.

Outflows from Kelly Warm Spring are located within a mile of the Snake River. Introduced warm water species were already in nearby Ditch Creek, and managers wanted to make sure they wouldn’t continue to spread.

After analyzing options like trapping, netting, and electrofishing, the park selected a pesticide-based treatment. They opted for rotenone, a chemical widely used in fisheries work. After spending hundreds of hours preparing the site and clearing vegetation, they donned protective equipment and applied liquid and extended-release “sand balls” of the chemical in August 2018. They then spent days scooping dead fish from the water. Rotenone kills species that breathe through gills, and Whaley says they timed the treatment for when native amphibians wouldn’t have gills and for when Ditch Creek was dry.

“We want to make sure that we do everything right,” Whaley says.

While the treatment didn’t kill all the fish in the spring, it substantially reduced their numbers. “We brought the risk level associated with Kelly Warm Spring down quite a few notches,” Whaley says. The goal is to restore native species, but they may need to apply more rotenone or implement new strategies to eliminate the rest of the invasive fish first. Restocking native fish may also be a possibility down the line if they don’t naturally recolonize from nearby waters.

While releasing a small fish into the wild may seem like an inconsequential act, the case of Kelly Warm Spring shows how introducing even seemingly harmless pets can create damage that ripples throughout the ecosystem and causes land managers to expend a tremendous amount of effort to restore native wildlife populations.

By Kristen Pope

Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and editor. She has written about white-nose syndrome in bats, tiny houses, conservation easements, and more for Western Confluence. Learn more about her work at kepope.com.

One summer day in 1992, two teenage boys fishing Lake Mary Ronan watched a man dump a cooler of fish near the lake outlet and leave. Sensing something amiss, the boys wrote down the license plate number and then quickly netted a couple dozen small yellow perch. They called Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and reached Jim Vashro, the state fisheries biologist at the time, who recalls making a split-second decision that day. “We just happened to have a leftover barrel of rotenone in Kalispell.” (He describes the situation as an ask-for-forgiveness-later type of decision, knowing that the normal channels for rotenone approval would come too late for the situation he was faced with.) Vashro arrived within hours and treated the bay with rotenone, a powerful chemical that fatally interrupts oxygen intake of gilled organisms at the cellular level. Any desirable fish caught in the crossfire would be replaced from hatchery stock. The treatment of the bay yielded a couple dozen more perch.

Yellow perch, a popular sport fish native to Atlantic and Arctic Ocean watersheds including the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins, but not to any watershed west of the continental divide, are spiny with cartilage and voracious. Salmonids such as kokanee and rainbow are smooth and fleshy: good eating for anglers and predators alike. The introduction of yellow perch in Lake Mary Ronan meant adding a new predator to the system, something that could both prey on and compete with the existing salmonids, a wrench thrown into a delicate biotic system.

At the time, Vashro feared if the perch took hold and spread across the lake, eradicating them would cost up to $300,000.

“At least two perch got away from us though.” Vashro, now retired from more than 30 years in fisheries management, purses his lips as he recalls the incident over coffee.

In the 27 years since, yellow perch exploded to about 80 percent of the lake’s biomass, wiped out the lake’s westslope cutthroat, and created a management situation where Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (known regionally as FWP) now spends $40,000 per year to stock kokanee and rainbow trout. The estimated cost to rotenone the entire lake and restock desired species is now around $1 million, in addition to the burden of years of permitting and public comment. The perch have simply become part of the lake’s biome.

Tax payers, state coffers, anglers, and nearby communities take the hit for the short-sighted and short-term benefit of the “bucket biologist,” anglers who bring in new species with the intent to improve their own fishing opportunities. Whether their intent lays in convenience, preference, or simply nostalgia, their actions can have far-reaching effects. Such bucket biologists are the bane of wildlife managers, who already have a hard job. They are tasked with maintaining ecological health as well as providing sportfishing opportunities, not to mention juggling the fundamental and competing philosophies that underpin each of those, in waterways transformed by decades of illegal fish introductions and misguided stocking programs inherited from a bygone era, all on a short budget and with little sympathy from the public. One biologist tells me frankly, “We can’t do everything we’d like to, and we can’t make everyone happy.”

A long history of heavily managed fisheries doesn’t help the case against the bucket biologist. State-sponsored bucket biology of the 19th and 20th centuries is responsible for much of the sport fishing touted across the West. This was a time where fisheries managers acted without fully understanding larger ecological effects of introducing a species. Two of Montana’s beloved trout species are nonnative. Though rainbow trout are native to the upper Kootenai River, which flows south from British Columbia into a tiny corner of northwest Montana, they are nonnative and have been widely introduced elsewhere across the state. Brown trout were introduced from Europe in the 1880s. Very few waterways in Montana house a true native assemblage of aquatic species. Fisheries managers largely manage for ecological stability in a system, mated with some semblance of public whim and what anglers want in a fishery.

Historically, a waterfall just downstream of Lake Mary Ronan meant the lake had no native fish. In the 1890s, an agent for the Flathead Indian Reservation, whose wife is the namesake of the lake, introduced the first fish to the lake. Fishing became popular there, and by 1913 the Somers State Fish Hatchery was stocking cutthroat and rainbows. Numerous other species, including kokanee, as well as chinook and coho salmon, Yellowstone cutthroat, grayling, brook trout, largemouth bass, and sunfish, were introduced over the following century. Eventually, three salmonids—the cutthroat, kokanee, and rainbow trout—came to comprise a stable ecosystem that, though not native, supported well-liked sport fishing and provided a very important kokanee brood stock to feed the state’s fish hatcheries and stocking programs.

While early state-sponsored fish stocking was not grounded in science, decades of improved ecological understanding have contributed to the decision-making actions of fisheries managers, who still utilize stocking programs as a tool across the state. Bucket biologists, in contrast to fisheries managers, do not take into account the drastic ecological and economic effects that may come with an introduced species. Many bucket biologists consider their actions to be for the ultimate benefit of the fishery, though recent history suggests long-term negative impacts.

“It’s just a boom and bust cycle.” Vashro describes how a bucket biologist’s introduced species such as pike, perch, or walleye, with no competition, will initially blow up and be good fishing. But then they reach carrying capacity, and, like in Lake Mary Ronan, there will be a few 10- to 12-inch perch, but many more 4- to 6-inch ones. “No one wants to fish that.”

One of Vashro’s legacies was establishing a state-wide database of over 600 unlawful fish introductions, most of which resulted in decreased fishing opportunities. He estimates that just a couple of the 600 unlawful introductions documented in Montana improved the fishing. Furthermore, improved fishing conditions in the eyes of the bucket biologist are not improving the angling opportunities for the rest of the sportsman in the state or the long-term viability of a fishery. Introduction, particularly of an apex predator, might create a short-term boom (as it fills up on a surplus of prey), followed by a crash of both that species, as well as the pre-existing species that are now predated on or out-competed.

Vashro has even heard of bucket biologists with a 10-year plan. “They just move from lake to lake, introducing a species and fishing the boom, then moving on to the next boom as the lake busts behind them.”

On a Saturday in June, I walk past a stock tank of sodas outside a school house turned community center about five miles from Lake Mary Ronan and make my way through small clusters of people milling around plates of home-baked cookies and carafes of coffee.

The community center is serving as a venue for the Friends of Lake Mary Ronan open house. Fifty-odd lake residents, anglers, and other community members gather, taking seats in an assemblage of folding chairs, old church pews, easy chairs, and couches. I settle for an old school desk, my notebook taking the majority of the surface. On the docket for the afternoon are presentations on water quality, septic upgrade cost-sharing grants to address leaks, as well as illegal fish introductions.

The crowd, gathered in the interest of their lake, which some describe as dying, is charged. They cite a variety of concerns: decreased fishery productivity, eutrophication related to development, increasing numbers of nonnative cormorants feeding on the lake’s fish, and a newly introduced nonnative fish. Some care about algae and poor water quality disrupting swimming or boating. Some care about fishing for rainbow trout. Some care about fishing for perch. Others care simply about the lake’s kokanee brood stock. The perch population, spilled from that cooler in 1992, is on the bust end of its cycle, with a high population of stunted individuals.

Sam Bourret, in a blue plaid shirt with hands stuffed into jeans pockets, takes the stage last. In his mid-30s, Bourret, a fisheries biologist with Montana FWP based nearby in Kalispell, is here to talk about illegal fish introductions and the research he does to identify them. He clicks through his first few slides, flashing a bright smile with the slightest gap between his two front teeth as he mixes light-hearted jokes in with dense explanation of his otolith research.

“Oto: ear. And lith: stone.” Bourret enunciates slowly. “Oto-lith.” He has a goofy slide with a human ear superimposed on a fish and Stonehenge. For those a little foggy on their fish physiology or Latin, he explains, the otolith is the ear bone of a fish. As a fish grows, the otolith records the unique geochemical profile of the body of water where the fish lives. Similar to tree ring data, it provides a timeline of a fish’s life history. Bourret takes a slice of that otolith, using it to identify the body of water a fish came from, and subsequently, whether a drastic change in habitat has occurred, such as in the instance of a fish being moved to a new body of water. He takes a pause to pass a plastic sandwich bag containing actual otoliths around the room, adding that they make great earrings for fish lovers.

Bourret clicks to the next slide. In 2015, a commercial fishing crew contracted by FWP to remove nonnative lake trout raised the alarm when they unexpectedly plucked two walleye—toothy, nonnative predators, previously not present—from Swan Lake. Walleye are a big fish; the Montana record stands right around 17 pounds, though most are just a pound or two. While Montana fisheries managers stock and manage walleye for sport fishing east of the continental divide, they fear the threat walleye pose to westslope cutthroat west of the divide in places such as Swan Lake.

Bourret quickly jumped on the case. His slide shows a slightly oscillating line with a dramatic y-axis shift when the fish arrived in Swan Lake. By collecting and analyzing other walleye otoliths from Montana (there are just a handful of lakes, reservoirs, and associated rivers where walleye are found), Bourret identified the source of the introduced fish as Lake Helena, more than 150 miles away. A local paper picked up the story and dubbed Bourret “the Fish Detective,” a moniker he’s carried ever since.

This presentation at the community center isn’t his first in the region or the state. He has presented his otolith research everywhere from a “Science on Tap” event at a nearby brewery to the American Fisheries Society student chapter at Montana State University. Bourret knows his research isn’t catching bucket biologists, but hopes that the education piece that comes along with his presentations can continue to raise awareness and help shift the culture away from bucket biology, whether that be through the fear of being caught, or the understanding of the severe ecological and financial costs of managing an introduced species.

“This is 100 percent preventable,” Bourret tells me, shaking his head.

Vashro concurs. “Prevention is where it is at. People need to knock it off.”

Across the West, states are getting serious about stopping illegal fish introductions. Around the time of the 1992 perch release in Lake Mary Ronan, Montana FWP first designated reward money for informants who turned in bucket biologists. The current bounty on those responsible for the two walleye in Swan Lake that Bourret’s team identified is $30,000, offered by the state of Montana and Trout Unlimited.

Montana is not alone facing the issue of bucket biologists’ attempts to curate their preferred fishing spot. In Alaska, the fine for transporting a nonnative species to new waterways can be up to $10,000. In 2018, the state of Utah drained Kolob Reservoir near St George, treating it with rotenone after yellow perch, green sunfish, and bluegill—three species that threatened the endangered Virgin River chub and woundfin—showed up. When northern pike appeared in a Colorado reservoir in 2018, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, in conjunction with local and state partners, started paying anglers $20 for every pike pulled out of the reservoir and the White River. And after a bucket biologist released northern pike into Nevada’s Comins Lake in 2004, angler user days dropped from about 35,000 to an estimated 2,000. In 2015, Nevada spent $250,000 to remove the pike, but in 2017 someone released more northern pike into the same water body. The state has offered a $10,000 bounty for information about this latest pike introduction.

The license plate number those teens grabbed in 1992 at Lake Mary Ronan identified Gregg Mosely as the bucket biologist behind the devastating yellow perch release. Law enforcement located him and cited him; he received a restitution fine for FWP’s mitigation efforts and two years loss of fishing privileges. But when he received the bill to the tune of $1,500, he balked. The case ultimately went to the Montana Supreme Court in a jurisdictional feud, where Mosely successfully argued that the court in which he was charged did not have the power to levy restitution fines for a misdemeanor in excess of $500. The remainder of his fine was thrown out.

To this day, Montana has not paid out a major bounty for someone reporting any bucket biology. Of the 600 documented illegal introductions Vashro has cataloged, he points to about a dozen instances in the state where someone was prosecuted for an illegal fish introduction.

“It’s mostly the private pond vector,” he says. “Someone steps around the law to stock their own property with whatever, not realizing and not caring about the downstream effect.” He describes how one man put grass carp in his pond to help control the reeds so he could have a better pond habitat to train his hunting dog in. “Putting grass carp at the headwaters of the Columbia River watershed…” Vashro trails off, shaking his head. In that instance, the individual had forged import papers three times, ultimately earning himself a $3,500 fine for the removal of the species. In the end, it’s much easier for FWP to clean up unlawfully stocked private ponds than larger water bodies like Lake Mary Ronan, or instances when fish enter entire watersheds.

“We know people who know who is doing it,” Vashro tells me. “We even had an informant who knew who was introducing walleye to Noxon Reservoir. We were waiting for him to tell us the next time the guy was going to release the walleye, but he [the informant] went to jail for something else and clammed up.”

“We need a citation,” Bourret tells me. “Someone needs to get slapped with a big fine.”

Back at the community center, the projector screen flashes again. A murmur emerges from the crowd as Bourret explains what we are looking at. The slide shows the otolithic profile of a northern pike indicating the fish was born in Lake Mary Ronan. Pike are an aggressive predator, known to eliminate their own food supply within a couple years and turn cannibalistic in the absence of other prey. In eastern Montana, pike wiped out several prairie minnow species. While a sought-after sport fish, illegally introduced pike are a fisheries manager’s nightmare. This isn’t the first pike to be pulled from the lake. It’s the fourth that’s been turned in to FWP since 2015 and other sightings have been reported. But Bourret’s research indicates this is the first evidence of a pike born in the lake, which means the population is establishing. Just the day before, Montana FWP issued a mandatory kill order for any pike discovered in the lake.

Bourret concludes his presentation and begins to take questions. The first hand shoots up.

“Is having pike in this lake such a bad thing?”

Bourret sticks to the science, not taking the bait into what is obviously an emotionally charged debate. “We know pike are voracious. They may prey on the perch, but they are likely to prey on the kokanee and rainbows as well.”

A week later on Bourret’s porch, he talks more about the answer that man might have been looking for. “He wanted me to say that having an apex predator present in the lake would put pressure on the yellow perch and make better perch fishing. But we don’t know that. We, the FWP, have to be concerned about the effect that pike may have on kokanee. That’s Montana’s sole brood stock for the state’s hatcheries.”

By Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is a former environmental educator and freelance writer who lives in northwest Montana.

A mile outside of Browning, Montana, a watercraft inspector sits on the side of the highway next to her kennel. She’s waiting for boaters heading to and from Glacier National Park to pull onto the side of the road for a mandatory invasive species check. Meet Lily, a 55-pound, 11-year-old, golden Labrador retriever with a white face. She wears red booties on her front feet and a red vest. Today, Lily and Aimee Hurt, her trainer, are here to support two Blackfeet Fish and Wildlife rangers, Lia Rattler and Leander Butterfly. Together the team is searching for signs of zebra and quagga mussels, two invasive species threatening Montana’s beloved rivers, lakes, and streams. Lily is not only speeding up the searches, but she’s also helping spread the word about how critical these inspections are in protecting the West’s waters from invasive species.

Bring it to the classroom: access a version of this article modified to an eighth grade reading level.

These mussels are prolific, pistachio-sized creatures which affix themselves to surfaces with a byssus, a clump of secreted filaments. In Michigan, the mussels have already caused huge, ecosystem-wide shifts in Lakes Michigan and Huron, two of the world’s biggest lakes, where trillions thrive. Mussels, which have been moving west over the last few decades, pose a massive threat to Montana’s aquatic ecosystems and struggling native fish populations like Arctic grayling, bull trout, and westslope cutthroat. The mussels consume all of the microscopic food in a water system, leaving little for other wildlife, including native fish. They also encrust infrastructure, like water pipes, and ruin beaches. Imagine cutting your feet on decaying mussel shells any time you tried to walk barefoot along your favorite lake.

Mussels spread quickly in part because they produce up to one million eggs per year. Fertilized eggs develop into microscopic larvae, called veligers, within a few days. These near-invisible larvae can survive for weeks in river currents and travel hundreds of miles. They love lakes and sluggish rivers, and they can live undetected inside motors or tanks, where human inspectors can’t reach. This is where the dogs come in. Unlike humans, they’re extremely effective at detecting mussels in the larval stage. While humans must use sight and touch to search boats, feeling for a sandpaper-like texture of juvenile mussels just beginning to grow their hard shells, dogs are able to smell the veligers in water, where they’re completely invisible to humans.

“For dogs like Lily,” says Hurt, “this is the most fun thing they could do.”

At this point, Montana is not infested. Water sample tests do show, however, that the mussels are making their way west, though officials have not found any established populations or adult mussels. In 2016, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks found low-density traces of larvae in water samples from the Tiber Reservoir, near Shelby. Subsequent water samples in Canyon Ferry Reservoir, the Milk River below the Nelson Reservoir, and the Missouri River near Townsend showed inconclusive but suspect results. In mid-June of this past year, North Dakota had its first mussel contamination, after an angler spotted them in Lake Ashtabula. Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and Idaho are the only states in the West which have no known mussel detections—and which conduct sufficient monitoring to determine with any degree of certainty that they likely don’t have mussels.

In Montana alone, these creatures could cost the state $234 million annually by decreasing water quality, lowering recreation revenue, clogging irrigation equipment, reducing real estate prices, and damaging infrastructure, according to a 2019 report by the Montana Invasive Species Council.

Lily and Hurt are here through Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C) in an attempt to keep the mussels out of Montana for as long as possible. Hurt, who holds a biology degree from the University of Montana, cofounded the Bozeman-based company, which trains high-energy, tough-to-home shelter dogs to protect ecosystems and wildlife around the world. WD4C has 12 mussel-sniffing dogs on staff, and 35 dogs total who work in 16 countries across five continents. They’ve partnered with dozens of conservation groups, helping protect ecosystems from invasive species by catching invaders early—brook trout, emerald-ash borer, yellow star thistle, rosy wolf snails, and brown tree snakes, to name a few. The dogs are especially good at identifying the first colonizers of an invasive species, so that managers have a chance to intervene before a population establishes.

“I see dogs as a way for us to buy more time before mussels hit Montana,” Hurt says, “while researchers come up with more tools to deal with the invasion.”

WD4C looks for what Hurt calls “needle-in-a-haystack dogs” by tossing a ball down the aisle of a shelter and looking for the dog that tracks it. They go through about a thousand dogs to find one who is suitable for this type of work. A good working dog like Lily is too much for a typical household. “I’ve learned that if there’s some point during the dog’s initial stay where I think, ‘This is a huge mistake,’ then I know the dog is a good fit,” says Hurt, who found Lily through a private shelter near Atlanta. Lily was on her fifth home before she came to live with Hurt and three other dogs in Missoula.

Hurt describes their first training exercise together as a disaster. “I was tangled up and she was barking and frothing and confused.” But Lily soon improved. In another exercise, Hurt would place a scent inside cinder blocks, and when Lily sniffed the target scent, Hurt would throw a ball across her line of vision. Quickly, Lily realized that all she had to do to earn playtime was to approach a target scent and sit. Many veteran dogs like Lily learn scents in a few hours. (Wicket, a retired dog in Hurt’s household, knows 32 scents—from Hawaiian rosy wolf snails to Chinese moon bear scat—and has traveled more than 100,000 miles in 12 years of field work.)

Lily knows 19 scents so far, including white-footed vole, grizzly scat, and Lespedeza, a flowering plant also known as bush clover. She can even tell the difference between an invasive species of Lespedeza and a native species. This summer, she worked in Ravalli (a small town near Flathead Lake), both ends of the Bighorn Canyon, Yellowstone Lake, and Lake Roosevelt.

Hurt considers dogs supplementary to human searchers. “Dogs are good at the prevention piece of conservation; low-density, hard to spot things. They’re also great for quickly confirming human finds,” she says.

As of late July, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks inspectors had checked over 50,000 watercraft, and found 12 boats containing traces of mussels this year. This morning, outside Browning, a truck pulling a large motorboat stops and two men climb out.

“Mind if Lily here checks your boat?” asks Hurt. She wears muck boots and a fluorescent yellow vest with dog toys in the pockets that Lily keeps trying to grab.

“Oh, you got dogs doing this?” the man with the ponytail says. “That’s really neat.”

“Okay, sweet pea,” says Hurt, and Lily approaches the boat, wriggling with excitement.

“Show me,” says Hurt. Lily shuffles, squeaking, tail wagging. She trots back and forth, going where Hurt points.

“Come check right here,” Hurt says.

Lily puts her nose on the bumper, leaving a wet mark in the dust. She walks all the way around the boat. Hurt takes extra care to direct Lily toward the drainage holes in the back, where Lily jumps and places her booties on the boat to balance while she sniffs. Nothing. The rubber ball on a rope stays in Hurt’s pocket.

The inspection is over in less than five minutes. Hurt hands the men a card with Lily’s picture on it and information about WD4C and mussels. Public education is an important part of Lily and Hurt’s job. WD4C trained Alberta Environment and Parks’ Conservation K9 teams in mussel prevention, and they did more than $1 million worth of outreach in the program’s first year.

The men climb back into their truck, pull onto the highway, and drive away. After a few chilly hours, the sun comes out. Vehicles stop every 15 to 20 minutes. Lily sniffs kayaks, motorboats, and blow-up paddleboards. No sign of mussels today, but Lily doesn’t mind. Every so often, Hurt hides a vial of frozen mussels somewhere on her truck so that Lily can find them and earn some well-deserved play time.

Mussels haven’t infested Montana yet, and dog-handler teams like Lily and Hurt could be critical in keeping these high-stakes invaders away for as long as possible.

Text and photos by Maria Anderson

Maria Anderson’s work has recently appeared in Alpinist, Climbing, 32 Degrees, and Best American Short Stories 2018. She earned her MFA from the University of Wyoming and currently lives in Bozeman, Montana. Find her on Twitter @mariauanderson.

One hundred thousand quagga mussels can live in a single square meter, and 450 trillion of them infest Lake Michigan alone.Quagga and closely related zebra mussels quickly spread, damaging ecosystems, deteriorating water quality, and leading to algal blooms. They clog boat motors, agricultural irrigation systems, and hydropower facilities, as well as consume massive amounts of plankton causing cascading food web effects. Their sharp shells rip up beachgoers’ feet. They have decimated the Great Lakes, and they’re moving west. Scientists first detected quagga mussels in Lake Mead in 2007, and now the species is present throughout Lake Mead and Lake Mohave, as well in other western waterways. Once the mussels infest a body of water, managers have no way to eradicate them.

Officials are on the hunt for solutions. Currently, most efforts focus on preventing mussels from entering waterways in the first place, but since their western spread seems inevitable, researchers are also looking for solutions to remove infestations. In 2018, the Bureau of Reclamation held a prize competition that offered $100,000 for the most environmentally sound and cost-effective theories about how to eradicate quagga and zebra mussels from areas where they are invasive. The winning solution is a bit of a wild idea.

Bring it to the classroom: access a version of this article modified to an eighth grade reading level.

The mussels are native to waterways in eastern Europe, including the Black and Caspian Seas, where native predators keep them in check. They arrived to the Great Lakes via ballast water from ships in the 1980s. They now live in many areas of the eastern US and are spreading west.

“Reclamation is really concerned about the mussels,” Bureau of Reclamation biologist Sherri Pucherelli says. “They’re getting into hydropower facilities and causing some operational issues and maintenance issues.” She describes how the mollusks attach to water infrastructure where they clog pipes—which can lead to overheating—and disrupt water flow.

A molluscicide called Zequanox kills up to 90 percent of the invasive mussels, according to Beth Bear, Wyoming Game and Fish Department Aquatic Assessment Crew Supervisor, who notes the mussels have not yet been found in Wyoming. However, that rate of effectiveness might not be enough. “Ninety percent helps, but there are still so many of them that we really need something close to 100 percent,” Bear says. She also points out the difficulty of chemically treating large volumes of water and the potential for downstream impacts.

To address this enormous problem, the Bureau of Reclamation crowdsourced potential solutions via a prize competition. Over 100 teams submitted entries, and the judging panel reviewed 67. Steven Suhr and Marie-Claude Senut, founders of Biomilab, LLC, received the top $80,000 prize, with $10,000 awards going to Wen Chen and the team of Absar Alum and Stephanie Bone. Suhr and Senut’s winning entry proposes a controversial solution: modifying the genome of laboratory-cultured mussel cells to spread a lethal malignant hemic neoplasia—a cancer which can be transmitted merely by proximity—among the mussels. Of the runner up solutions, Wen’s proposal involved disrupting the proteins mussels use to attach to surfaces, and Alum and Bone proposed modifying genes so fertilized mussel eggs would die in sunlight.

Suhr and Senut, who both hold PhDs in molecular biology, came up with the winning idea based on canine disseminated neoplasia, a cancer spread from dog to dog, and a similar disease decimating Tasmanian devils. When they learned about a form of disseminated neoplasia in bivalve shellfish, they decided to investigate whether this could potentially work to wipe out invasive quagga and zebra mussels.

Their idea is only a hypothetical solution for now. Before unleashing it in the wild, a number of steps must take place. First, they will collect invasive mussels and culture their cells in a lab, making sure they aren’t affected by bacteria, fungi, or other contaminants. Since many forms of cancer involve mutation of genes that regulate cell division, they propose to mutate one critical regulator known as P53 to induce cancer.” Suhr says this type of modification is different than germline gene modifications, where genes are modified so future generations inherit certain traits. Suhr and Senut’s solution changes an independent cell and does not affect the mussels’ progeny.

“We’re in the weird position of actually trying to use cancer to an advantage as opposed to prevent cancer,” Suhr says.

Next, they will introduce the modified cells into live mussels in the laboratory to confirm the cancer can move between mussels and kill them. They also must run tests to ensure the cancer won’t harm other organisms. After seeing if the idea is feasible and possible, regulatory agencies would study the plan to make sure it is safe and effective before allowing any experiments in the wild.

Extreme caution is required since no experiment is foolproof. Any potential solution could have unforeseen implications when released into an ecosystem. With concerns about genome modification and unintended consequences—such as spreading to other species or moving into the species’ native range—development is slow and painstaking. “It takes time to develop because you also have to be careful with it,” Suhr says. He anticipates up to four years of laboratory work and says it could take a decade before their idea would be ready to apply on a large scale in an ecosystem.

“A lot of people would worry about this kind of stuff because obviously you don’t want to introduce something that’s going to impact the local shellfish population or any other kind of organisms,” Suhr says. “So there’s going to have to be a lot of testing in advance.”

While it seems like a wild idea to inflict cancer on a species to eliminate it, Suhr says sometimes the wild card option is the best one. “When you’re really trying to talk about eradication of zebra and quagga mussels in open waters and there aren’t a lot of good options, the crazy ideas may turn out to be the best possible choice,” Suhr says.

By Kristen Pope

Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and editor. Find more of her work at kepope.com.

Invasive species are not a new phenomenon, but over the past few decades the West has seen an explosion of all types in all ecosystems. From quagga mussels, New Zealand mudsnails, and lake trout in fisheries and waterways, to injurious plants like leafy spurge, cheatgrass, and salt cedar in our rangelands and riparian areas, species that are foreign, aggressive, and pervasive are threatening native ecological communities, changing productivity, altering disturbance regimes, and generally wreaking havoc on land managers and agricultural producers.

Through improved transportation networks, increased levels of outdoor recreation, and new development, we are seeing the number of potential vectors increase to infect additional landscapes ever more rapidly. As a result, we have mobilized local responses through coordinated planning and direct management efforts while improving monitoring and prevention campaigns. With new herbicides and mechanical measures, use of satellite imagery and predictive modelling, new grazing schemes, efforts to cultivate more benign competitive species, and a host of potential biological controls, land managers are approaching the problem from all angles. However, these measures can be expensive, especially when management necessitates repeated treatments.

For all of the good work, our approaches always seem to be too slow in reacting to continually evolving challenges; every time we believe we are getting ahead, the goalposts move.

Although research has helped, we still need to better understand ecology, succession, and the dynamics of natural systems across spatial and temporal scales, and the value of placing practitioners in the same room with researchers. We have the opportunity to improve our odds through a more comprehensive and holistic approach to management and control. For these reasons, among others, I established the Invasive Species Initiative: a group of 32 practitioners, managers, scientists, local, state, and federal government entities, and representatives of private landowners and industry.

These members have been split into two teams, Policy and Technical, to approach the massive issue of invasive species from all angles. I have asked them to focus first on terrestrial invasive plant species and deliver a report to me on issues and potential fixes. The teams have had multiple meetings to date and a final report is expected this spring, which I eagerly anticipate.

Wyoming can lead the way. From our on-the-ground experts in Weed and Pest Control Districts, to researchers at the University of Wyoming and all the ranchers, wildlife managers, and other experts in between, Wyoming has the knowledge and the wherewithal to truly fight this battle. In tandem with other states, and through a demonstrable commitment of effort, energy, and finances, we can stem the flow and move towards an ultimate goal of reversing the damage of invasive species. It is high time we stop being reactionary and commit to a more proactive approach to invasive species control. Doing so will give us the ability to put our efforts on a more sustainable and economically logical course while at the same time leaving this wonderful place we call home better off for generations to come.

I applaud the efforts to date, but I also recognize we can do better. I am excited to see what our state can do in the future and my confidence in our citizens’ ingenuity and ability to build true solutions could not be greater.

And here in California, wrapped like a gift by the
Sonoran Desert, lie 125 golf courses, their sprinklers
on timers, just a few miles from the Salton Sea
with its toxic red algae, pesticide lined depths,
choking stench from what looks like sand
at a distance, but is really the ground
shells and bones of fish and barnacles killed
by the sea’s rising salt.

The state’s wetlands paved over,
migrations turn to the sea,
for thousands of birds this is the last stop
before clearing the border wall and
keeping south to Baja. The rains bring more salt
from the hills, a lone species of tilapia the only fish
hardy enough to survive. Soon,
there will be nothing here, not even for the birds,
unless the sea stops drying up,
gets a huge donation of clean, fresh water.

Palm Springs stays humid, the date farms are sluiced,
you understand what is meant by inevitable.

By Alec Osthoff

From his Chevy Silverado, Phil Fine watched heavy rain fill up an irrigation ditch on his family farm in central Oregon. An affable third generation farmer in Jefferson County, Fine relies on water from the Deschutes River to grow grass, carrot, and garlic seed; alfalfa and grain hay; and wheat. “We can’t do a thing without water,” Fine said. “That Deschutes River is why we’re all here.” Fine and other agriculturalists in the arid region have come to depend on the dams and reservoirs that alternately hold the Deschutes’ water back and then release it when farmers most need it to water their crops. The system, though imperfect, works well enough for irrigators. But the pressing question in central Oregon is what it means for a pocket-sized frog.

In August 2014, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Oregon spotted frog as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Under the terms of the act, the frog’s habitat warranted immediate protection. Environmental advocates and conservation groups in central Oregon, long concerned about the Deschutes River’s degraded fish and wildlife habitat, erosion issues, and poor water quality, saw an opportunity to reverse the river’s decline in overall health. But agriculturalists such as Fine, who depend on seasonal variations in streamflow for irrigation, worried that the frog’s water needs might take precedence over their own. Some feared that the listing would trigger another crisis like the timber wars that waged in Oregon during the ’80s and ’90s, when efforts to protect the northern spotted owl from extinction led to an ideological clash between environmental and timber interests: logging restrictions in old-growth forests aimed at preserving the owl’s habitat left timber and mill workers feeling as though their livelihoods had been sacrificed to the ESA, while northern spotted owl numbers nevertheless dwindled. Everyone I spoke to in central Oregon wants the story of the spotted frog to take a more positive turn.

“Listing has forced a number of competing interests to come to the table to seek common ground for conserving the species,” explained Jay Bowerman, a local biologist who has studied the amphibian for nearly 20 years. With so much on the line for those who live and work in Deschutes River Basin communities like Bend, Madras, Prineville, and Warm Springs, myriad stakeholders have joined the spotted frog recovery effort. Together they seek to navigate the complexities of the Endangered Species Act and produce a plan to conserve the ecosystems upon which the frog depends—one that will pass muster with the federal government and address the nuanced economics of water, wildlife, and work in the region. But they will have to act quickly to outpace legal challenges from outside environmental groups dissatisfied with the speed and scale of local conservation.

Once common across Oregon and Washington, now the Oregon spotted frog, Rana pretiosa, occupies just 10 percent of its historic range. Small, isolated populations crop up throughout central Oregon in or near perennial water bodies—including the Deschutes River’s riparian zones, ponds, and even roadside ditches. The frog’s ecology is not well understood, but the amphibian, named for the inky blotches covering its head and back, is likely sensitive to changes in the river’s hydrologic system. The species is subject to other pressures too, such as loss of wetland habitat in a rapidly developing region and predation from introduced species like brook trout and bullfrogs.

Formal collaboration efforts related to spotted frog recovery actually got underway in central Oregon a decade ago. In 2008, eight irrigation districts joined the city of Prineville to prepare a habitat conservation plan for the Upper Deschutes Basin. The process galvanized a coalition of 20 stakeholders ranging from Portland General Electric to Trout Unlimited to steward several fish and wildlife species in the basin. At the time, the frog was still a candidate species. The resulting plan would map out a vision for protecting it and several other proposed, candidate, or listed species, including bull trout and steelhead. If approved by the USFWS, it would also act as a kind of insurance policy for irrigation districts, buffering them against costly civil and criminal penalties should they accidentally harm or kill a threatened or endangered species, or damage its habitat, all violations of the Endangered Species Act.

The irrigation district-led collaborative effort to safeguard species as well as irrigators’ livelihoods appeared to be off to a good start. A wide swath of people with differing perspectives and values were coming together to devise solutions. But six years later, when the USFWS released its decision to list the frog as threatened, the group still did not have a plan in place. “We should have been working harder, stronger, faster,” lamented Fine, who is also a member of the North Unit Irrigation District and Deschutes River Conservancy Boards. The latter is a Bend-based nonprofit working to improve leaky, aging irrigation canals and keep more Deschutes water instream.

Listing reignited grassroots engagement. One month after the spotted frog appeared in the Federal Register, a confederation of irrigation districts established the Basin Study Working Group with funding from the Bureau of Reclamation. The working group brought together constituents representing agriculture, conservation, local tribes, recreation, government, and industry to seek strategies for increasing flows in the Upper Deschutes while conserving water for cities and agriculture well into the future.

By initiating both the habitat conservation plan and the basin study as collaborative efforts, the irrigation districts hoped to get out in front of environmental concerns, and to better anticipate and mitigate water management issues that might imperil the frog or local farmers’ livelihoods. “I want to fix the river,” avowed Phil Fine. “I believe every species has a right to survive and potentially thrive, and I really mean that.” Some environmental groups declined to participate in the basin study, fearing that irrigators with the force of western water law on their side would retain too much power in the facilitated process. Others saw a rare opportunity to make headway on an intractable resource management issue.

Gail Snyder, co-founder of the nonprofit Coalition for the Deschutes, which promotes restoration and protection of the Deschutes River and its watershed, was among those who joined the basin study’s steering committee. For Snyder, these stakeholder-driven efforts ramped up during a critical time for the modern Deschutes, the lifeblood of the region. “Our entire economy in central Oregon really hinges on water,” Snyder said, her vowels revealing her Western Australian origins. The river fuels agriculture as well as the massive outdoor recreation and tourism economies woven into the fabric of central Oregon life. Snyder imagines such interests can coexist in a basin that can also one day win a clean bill of ecological health. “We can have a healthy river, we can have agriculture,” she averred.

As conservation planning advanced, new local alliances in central Oregon began to form. Fine described how Snyder introduced herself to him “at some water thing,” saying that she would like to sit down and talk. “So I ended up going to her house and sitting around her table for two hours, with her cat, drinking coffee and talking about water. She actually gets it. She understands all sides of it.”

“In order to have a successful outcome for the river, agriculture, and our community, we must have a truly collaborative process. We must talk to each other, treat each other with respect, and cooperate and compromise,” Snyder added. Still, by the close of 2015, after years of local conservation planning, stakeholders still had little to show in the way of tangible outcomes. Environmental advocacy organizations based outside of the region took note.

In January of 2016, the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona and WaterWatch of Oregon, headquartered in Portland, filed twin lawsuits against three irrigation districts and the US Bureau of Reclamation (the agency that oversees western water storage, diversion, and delivery projects). The litigants asserted that the Crane Prairie, Wickiup, and Crescent Reservoirs and their dams damaged or destroyed frog habitat, and therefore violated the Endangered Species Act, and they called for a radical change to water management on the Deschutes and its tributaries. The Center for Biological Diversity and WaterWatch wanted minimum instream flows during the winter storage season to increase from 20 cubic feet per second to a minimum of 770 cfs to match historic flows in the Deschutes. In recent decades, flows in the Deschutes have ranged from 20 cfs during the winter, when irrigators divert water into upstream reservoirs for storage, to 2,000 cfs during summertime release. Increasing winter flows to 770 cfs would mean less stored water in the cold months, and leave many irrigators without sufficient water at their headgates during the growing season.

“We basically had to circle the wagons,” said Fine. “We were scared. We went into protection and survival mode.” Irrigators lined up to guard their livelihoods. For the next ten months, while the courts considered the lawsuit, agriculturalists felt as though they had been left in limbo. “I had 20 percent of my ground idle because of the frog,” Fine said, describing that period of uncertainty. “There are a lot of guys who lost a whole year’s production on quite a bit of ground because of the timing of the whole thing. It was a big deal in Jefferson County.”

In late 2016, the irrigators agreed to a settlement that called for temporarily increasing wintertime flows to 100 cfs. Fine says North Unit first agreed to the higher wintertime flows, and other districts followed suit, some begrudgingly. “We did it voluntarily,” said Fine, who predicts that the effects of the stopgap regime will vary from year to year. “In really good water years, it is not going to make much difference because we have really good inflows in the summer that will hopefully carry us through. But we’re just coming out of a drought cycle. If we get several drought years in a row, you’re going to see a lot of farm ground sitting idle because we don’t have the water to irrigate it.”

The settlement also compelled the Bureau of Reclamation to consult with the USFWS to determine how dam and reservoir operations might impact spotted frogs. In September 2017, biologists in the USFWS Bend Field Office submitted their 300-page “biological opinion,” concluding that the temporary changes to water management are unlikely to further jeopardize the frog or destroy its critical habitat. But in the document the USFWS also recommends the Bureau of Reclamation ramp up winter flows over the next 20 years to eventually reach 600 cfs, a number much closer to the river’s historic flows. And the opinion nudges along the collaborative work begun in 2008: the irrigation districts and other constituents will need to finalize a formal habitat conservation plan soon. The USFWS, which has already provided $3.6 million in grants to support planning, expects to publish the final plan by this summer.

The quick one-two of listing and lawsuit clearly shook up local stakeholders playing the long, slow game of species recovery. Irrigators regarded the suit as a setback to cooperation. On the heels of the settlement, Mike Britton, president of the Deschutes Basin Board of Control representing central Oregon’s eight irrigation districts, released a thinly veiled critique of the legal challenge: “The collaborative approach has proven successful in our region, and results in better outcomes than confrontation.” Scientists in the USFWS Bend Field Office, suddenly pressed to fast track their analysis of the impact of dams and reservoirs to the frog, felt the impact too. “Rather than spending time on important research and monitoring that allows us to develop effective conservation measures for the species, we must spend time addressing the legal aspects of the ESA,” wrote Bend-based USFWS biologist Jennifer O’Reilly in an email.

Now seemingly everyone fears the chilling effect of more litigation. When the parties settled the 2016 suit, the Center for Biological Diversity and WaterWatch reserved the right to contest the biological opinion. Almost every stakeholder in the basin believes they will, and that will likely cast a pall over the community’s ongoing collaborative efforts.

“If everything gets litigated, in the final analysis it just puts up bigger walls between the sides that need to be talking and working together,” observed Simon Wray, a veteran conservation biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s a tool to get a process that is stalled moving, but it can have some pretty negative effects.”

Almost everyone I spoke with in the basin allowed that the local collaborative processes have moved slowly, often too slowly. But most also view litigation, and in particular the lawsuit from the out-of-state Center for Biological Diversity, as corrosive to local problem solving.

For irrigators committed to modernization measures, for instance, another legal tangle will almost certainly sidetrack projects to pipe or line canals and to improve on-farm efficiencies, projects intended to keep more water in the frog’s habitat. “We’re spending millions of dollars a year on attorneys,” Phil Fine told me. “That money could be going to water conservation projects.”

It may be too soon to tease out precisely how the lawsuit will affect local collaboration, and ultimately, the recovery of the Oregon spotted frog. On one hand, litigation shook trust in the region and tied up resources that might have otherwise gone to protecting the frog from extinction. But on the other, the specter of litigation, especially from outside the region, motivates locals to turn to one another for creative solutions and expedites an otherwise slow-moving process. O’Reilly wrote, “Conservation is a long process, and we have yet to see how this will play out for the spotted frog. My hope is that we can move beyond a litigious environment and come together to work towards conservation.”

Courtney Carlson is assistant professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, where she teaches environmental literature and writing courses.

Brady Godwin was on the lookout for river otters. In 2010 and 2011, he floated by raft down southwest Wyoming’s New Fork River, the Upper Green River above Fontenelle Reservoir, and the Green River within Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge, searching for signs of otters. Only a few western US watersheds—including the Green River and its tributaries—are home to these members of the weasel family. As a University of Wyoming graduate student, Godwin’s aim was to survey otter distribution within the Green River Basin to obtain baseline numbers so he could analyze how expanding energy development affected the species.

“We wanted to see where they were,” Godwin explains. “There wasn’t a lot of historical information about them in the area.”

He didn’t expect to see many of the reclusive animals, but he thought he’d see plenty of signs, such as scat. The area was prime otter habitat with plenty of fish. He searched for otter latrines—shared defecation sites—and marked each one by GPS. He collected fresh otter scat from every latrine 12 times during each year and used hair snares at high-activity locations to collect hair samples for DNA analysis.

While both the Green River and the Upper Green River showed about the number of animals expected in such prime otter habitat, otters were conspicuously absent from the New Fork River.

“I found the occasional otter scat but nothing at all that would indicate persistent resident populations,” Godwin says of the New Fork River. His advisor, University of Wyoming wildlife ecology professor Merav Ben-David, even brought her otter-sniffing dog to investigate. When the dog couldn’t find evidence of otters either, they began to wonder why.

The absence of otters in the New Fork River was especially concerning because they are top predators in freshwater ecosystems. They control populations of fish, crayfish, and other aquatic animals and keep the ecosystems healthy by not letting populations get out of control. According to Ben-David, otters eat the equivalent of 10 percent of their body mass in fish each day, and that means toxins and heavy metals the fish might have consumed build up in the otters. This process, called bio-accumulation, can have a number of negative effects on otters including reproductive problems and death. Their sensitivity to environmental degradation, human-caused disturbances, and pollution makes them a “sentinel species,” a harbinger of potential water quality threats that could affect humans.

In order to figure out what was keeping otters away from the New Fork River, the scientists gathered data on several environmental factors. “We were immediately thinking of possible explanations for river otter absence—energy development being one of them—but [we] also looked at potential food, general habitat quality, disturbance, and anything we brainstormed that might be affecting the otters,” Godwin says. They obtained fish counts from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to see if the otters had an adequate food supply. To test whether disturbance was harmful to the animals, they compiled observations, aerial imagery, and GIS data including roads, power lines, buildings, and other forms of development. They also gathered information about potential noise and light disturbances. They wanted to examine every potential reason otters weren’t present, narrowing down the possibilities one by one.

Next, they used electrical conductivity loggers at four sites to indirectly test for pollution. One logger was above the Pinedale Anticline energy development field. The next was below a wastewater treatment facility that processes high-saline waste fluids from hydraulic fracking. The other two were further downstream, in the Upper Green River and wildlife refuge sections of the study area. The scientists logged conductivity levels daily from July through November in 2012.

All three stretches of river had similar habitat and food available, but Godwin’s calculations showed more disturbance along the New Fork River than in other locations. Furthermore, in September, they found a large increase in conductivity—1.6 times the expected amount—downriver of the wastewater treatment facility. Readings taken at the same time above the facility showed normal levels. The researchers didn’t find any runoff, changes in river hydrology, or other explanations for the findings.

“We don’t know what was actually creating that charge,” Godwin says.

The researchers did not have the resources to detect specific compounds in the river at the time, and they cannot definitively say why otters are absent from the New Fork River, though they wrote in their peer-reviewed article about the study, “otters appeared to avoid areas near energy development.” They are currently seeking funding to re-sample the Green River, collect water samples to identify compounds that may explain the abnormal conductivity, and expand the study to the Wind River, Big Horn, and Platte watersheds further east in Wyoming.

“We don’t have a smoking gun or anything,” Godwin says. “We just have some pretty strong evidence that what might be affecting the otters might not be a perfectly natural process.”

By Kristen Pope

Further reading

B. Godwin, S. Albeke, H. Bergman, A. Walters, and M. Ben-David. “Density of river otters (Lontra candensis) in relation to energy development in the Green River Basin, Wyoming.” Science of the Total Environment 532 (2015) 780-790. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.06.058

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The second week of September 2013, rain pummeled Cheyenne, Wyoming. According to the National Weather Service, six inches came down. But NWS data didn’t show how, just a few miles to the south, only three inches fell. That information came not from sophisticated computerized sensors as one might expect of weather monitoring, but from a much simpler source.

Rainfall data has all sorts of applications, from calculating crop insurance to planning storm water drains to issuing drought and flood warnings and more. But it’s tricky to collect. Much precipitation data comes from NWS stations, located about one every 25 miles across the country. In Wyoming the NWS station grid is uneven, with gaps of more than 100 miles in some places. The NWS stations are a “fantastic, wonderful source of information, until you need to know what’s happening locally,” said Nolan Doesken, Colorado State Climatologist.

Automated precipitation gauges that gather and store rainfall information on a computer chip without any human oversight, might seem like an easy way to fill in those holes in the map, but “Automated gauges are horrible,” especially in stormy or freezing conditions, said Tony Bergantino of the Wyoming State Climate Office. Except for the most expensive ones, they are notoriously inaccurate. NOAA maintains a network of high-end automated precipitation gauges, but not only are they sparse (only three in Wyoming), they cost upwards of $50,000 each, with thousands more in maintenance each year.

“An interested human being with a simple plastic rain gauge can do better than an automated device,” added Doesken. That’s how he came up with a clever solution to the local precipitation data shortage.

In 1997, after severe flooding killed five people in Fort Collins, he knew communities needed better local rainfall data. So he found a simple, inexpensive, and reliable rain gauge; trained volunteers to use it; and developed a database where users could upload measurements via phone or the web. When a volunteer entered data for the day, the point appeared on a map online, visible to everyone. He called it the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network or CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz).

“People like entering data and seeing it in spatial context. If we hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have caught on,” Doesken said. “And neither would we have been as enthused, because we immediately saw how precipitation for a given storm varied more than we ever thought.”

Over the following decade, with help from volunteers, state and federal climate agencies, and a few big grants, the network expanded. A weather forecaster and CoCoRaHS volunteer in Colorado pitched in by writing code that would send an alarm to the appropriate NWS office, based on location, should anyone report especially heavy precipitation.

“When the Weather Service offices could get that alarm, everybody wanted it,” Doesken said. “We hardly had to do anything. They were begging us to spread it to new areas.” By the end of 2009, all fifty states had joined.

“We had no intention whatsoever of building a national or international network,” Doesken said. But CoCoRaHS continues to grow, spanning Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. “Our first volunteer from the Bahamas signed up today,” he said earlier this year.

Volunteers typically upload around 11,000 points each morning. Anyone can go to the CoCoRaHS website any day of the year and see a precipitation map of North America or comb through the data archives. Did the hail outside your office window also batter your garden at home? Zoom in on your town to find out. And better yet, anyone in Wyoming can get a big, clear plastic CoCoRaHS rain gauge from the State Climate Office for free and start contributing to the network. It takes about two minutes each morning to read the gauge and upload the data.

Not only does CoCoRaHS contribute valuable precipitation data (NWS is one of many organizations that now rely on it), but it also helps volunteers better understand their local climate. “There’s something about seeing water in the gauge,” Doesken said. Cities support the program because they’ve found people waste less water when they see firsthand how little falls from the sky.

Over 325 volunteers participated in Wyoming last year, adding much needed data to that from the National Weather Service stations in the state. Still, the challenge remains to recruit citizen data collectors to the network. What’s the target number of participants in Wyoming? “Five hundred thousand would be ideal,” said Bergantino.

How to become a citizen precipitation scientist

1. Sign up as a CoCoRaHS volunteer
2. Get a CoCoRaHS rain gauge (In Wyoming, contact the State Climate Office for a free gauge at wrds@uwyo.edu or (307) 766-6651)
3. Read the training manual
4. Check your rain gauge each morning and upload your data online
5. See your data point on a map

By Emilene Ostlind

As early as 2006, employees of the environmental group Western Watersheds Project allegedly trespassed onto Wyoming ranches to gather water samples. They were looking for evidence of stream contamination from livestock, data which they intended to turn over to state and federal regulators. The ranchers claimed this was a prime example of unauthorized trespass, which not only violated their private property rights, but was particularly harmful because the information would be used to directly attack them and their agricultural operations.

Seeking, in their words, to stop a “surreptitious and clandestine effort to ignore private property rights by trespassing,” 15 Wyoming ranchers sued Western Watersheds Project. In their complaint, the ranchers requested a court order declaring the organization’s employees had trespassed, a permanent injunction against future trespass, and compensation for damages and legal expenses. The lawsuit triggered state legislators to beef up trespassing laws in Wyoming, which critics say threatens scientific research and free speech.

Under Wyoming’s general trespass statute, a person has to know they are trespassing to get in trouble. Landowners are required to notify would be trespassers—by personal communication or posting signs—that they are not authorized on a given parcel of private land. Punishment under the statute includes up to six months in jail and/or a fine of up to $750. Some parties in the state, such as the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, a group that lobbied in favor of stronger trespassing laws, say this does not adequately protect landowners. Additionally, civil trespass litigation, like the action brought by the 15 Wyoming ranchers, is costly and cumbersome, says Bobbie Frank, Executive Director of the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts, another group that called for legislative action.

In response to the alleged trespass by the Western Watersheds Project employees and concern that the existing general criminal trespass statute was inadequate, the Wyoming Legislature enacted two new trespass statutes during the 2015 legislative session. The two statutes were virtually identical, except one made trespass a criminal act under which you could be jailed and fined, and the other made it a civil violation under which the landowner could sue for damages.

The 2015 statutes increased the penalties for trespassing onto “private open land” to collect data without permission, whether or not the trespasser knows they are trespassing. Trespassing to collect data now incurs a higher penalty than general trespass. A data-collecting trespasser could spend up to a year in jail and/or be fined up to $1,000 for a first offense. Future offenses could bring a minimum of ten days in jail (and up to a year) and/or a fine of $5,000, plus a potential civil action by the owner or lessee of the land requiring the trespasser to pay damages including litigation costs.

This might have addressed the ranchers’ woes, however, some last minute amendments to the bills criminalized “entering onto open land for the purpose of collecting resource data” (emphasis added). Apparently, the term “open land” was meant to apply to data collected on private, state, or public lands, so long as trespass occurred on private land somewhere along the way. However, that intent wasn’t necessarily clear in the statute’s wording. The term “open land” got many people, including University of Wyoming researchers, wondering if they could be found guilty under these statutes of trespass on state or federal land as well as private land.

That question garnered national attention after Justin Pidot, a Denver University law professor and pro-bono attorney for Western Watersheds Project, wrote an article for the online magazine Slate suggesting a Yellowstone tourist might commit a crime by submitting a vacation photo in a photo contest. Pidot’s article highlighted the statutes’ potential stifling impact on citizen science and data collection. He and other critics argued that the statutes attempt to block whistle blowers, stifle citizen science, and protect ranchers whose livestock pollute streams with bacteria.

Pidot and Western Watersheds Project had bigger concerns, too. They, along with several other groups, filed a complaint in the Wyoming Federal District Court alleging the statutes unconstitutionally violated the protection of free speech. The “data censorship laws make criminals and scofflaws of those who collect information necessary to speak out about what they see and find on lands in Wyoming,” they wrote.

The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed. Then, during the 2016 legislative session, the Wyoming legislature amended both statutes to remove the offending reference to “open land,” clarifying that the statutes only apply to trespass on private lands, not public land. Despite the amendments, the litigants pressed forward with their legal challenge, arguing that the statutes remain unconstitutional. In early July of 2016, Wyoming Federal District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl issued a ruling in the case in favor of the State of Wyoming, finding that there is not a constitutional right to access private lands. In his ruling, he wrote that “[t]he ends, no matter how critical or important to a public concern, do not justify the means, violating public property rights.” It is likely that Western Watersheds and the other litigants with appeal Judge Skavdahl’s ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the litigation over the amended statutes plays out, Wyoming researchers can take steps to protect themselves and the interest of private property owners. The key is to obtain written permission before collecting any data on private lands. This “will foster better communications and stronger relationships between landowners and researchers,” says Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Even if the courts declare the 2015 data trespass statutes unconstitutional, knowingly trespassing on to private property is still a crime in Wyoming and still violates private property rights.

By Temple Stoellinger

Temple Stoellinger is assistant professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and co-director of the Center for Law and Energy Resources in the Rockies at the University of Wyoming.

Further Reading

Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-3-414 (criminal trespass, 2016 and prior to 2016 amendment)

Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 40-27-101 (civil trespass, 2016 and prior to 2016 amendment)

Justin Pidot. “Forbidden Data.” Slate. May 11, 2015. http://bit.ly/slate-data-trespass

During the record-setting hot and dry years of 2012 and 2013, severe water shortages on the Wind River Indian Reservation turned fields to dust and forced cattle ranchers to sell their herds. The irrigation season runs from May to October, but warm, dry weather combined with limited water storage means “many years our irrigators are left without water from as early as the Fourth of July to mid-August,” said Mitch Cottenoir, Tribal Water Engineer.

The Wind River Indian Reservation encompasses 2.2 million acres of sagebrush steppe in west-central Wyoming between the Wind River and Owl Creek mountains. The two tribes that live there, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho, depend almost entirely on snowpack and glacial melt that flows through tributaries of the Wind River for their water supply. This alpine and high desert ecosystem at the top of the Missouri River watershed is especially vulnerable to climate change and drought—and so are the tribes that live within it.

While the Wind River Tribal Water Engineer’s Office does what it can to provide climate information to water users, limited federal climate and water monitoring sites on the reservation and insufficient training among staff make it hard to collect and communicate relevant data to the public in a meaningful way. Now, an unprecedented collaboration between multiple climate research stations, universities, and the Wind River tribes is addressing those challenges head on.

After the 2012 drought, Cottenoir and Northern Arapaho Tribal Liaison Gary Collins wanted to improve the reservation’s climate preparedness. Collins reached out to Shannon McNeeley, a research scientist at the North Central Climate Science Center at Colorado State University. McNeeley brought in contacts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center. In 2014, the group started meeting to discuss how to create tools and provide training for water managers on the reservation.

Cottenoir, Collins, and McNeeley realized addressing the larger challenges on the Wind River Reservation would mean working on many solutions at once. So they applied for a $390,000 federal climate-related grant to do a multifaceted, interdisciplinary drought vulnerability and preparedness project. When that funding came through in summer 2015, the project joined other efforts underway on the reservation.

“The idea is to build capacity and define parameters of drought conditions,” said Collins, which in turn will inform the tribes’ drought planning and tribal water code.

The four main components of the project consist of creating a drought risk assessment, training tribal members to collect, analyze and publish climate data, compiling and supporting local tribal knowledge regarding drought and climate, and creating a locally driven drought planning model that can be shared with other tribes.

To accomplish that first piece, researchers and scientists at universities and climate centers in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming are collaborating to produce a large-scale assessment of drought risk and vulnerability on the reservation. They’ll integrate and ground-truth a wide range of federal, state, and local research as well as tribal knowledge. When completed, it will become “one more significant tool we have for resource management,” said Collins.

To complement that reservation-wide assessment, the tribes and regional climate centers are also producing quarterly regional climate and drought summaries for the Wind River region, which review the last season’s climate, drought, and water supply conditions and look ahead to the future. Tools like the climate and drought summaries will be especially useful in advance of the annual growing season, said Cottenoir, helping his office “advise our irrigators within our community and the surrounding areas to the potential of drought situations so that they can make financial and personal decisions on what they want to do.” His office has already begun sharing the summaries with irrigators and water districts in the larger region.

A large part of the overall project’s capacity building effort consists of training Wind River water technicians how to collect and analyze local climate data. To date, Cottenoir’s office and the High Plains Regional Climate Center have worked together on these summaries. The tribal water office is taking increased ownership over the quarterly summaries and eventually plans to write the reports on their own. Additional education and community outreach efforts are also underway on the reservation.

“The data’s always been there but we didn’t know how to access it and where to access it,” Cottenoir said. “Through the training of our younger water techs, the future looks bright ’cause they’re going to have that new improved technical capability to where they can interpret that data.”

Another critical piece of the project is including local knowledge from tribal members, since many people on the reservation have cultural, in addition to economic and environmental, connections to water. McNeeley has interviewed Wind River residents to learn about historical decision making, risk perception, and adaptation on the reservation during previous droughts.

“We’re trying to tell a story about how drought has affected the reservation over time and how it could affect people into the future,” said Cody Knutson of the National Drought Mitigation Center, who leads the drought vulnerability project. Collaborators are also reconstructing historical drought records and studying ecological impacts of drought.

All of this will inform the ultimate goal of the project: developing a reservation-wide drought plan to help prepare for and mitigate impacts of future drought.

As the climate and snowpack patterns change, understanding drought and weather patterns will only become more critical, especially for water management. In addition to the drought preparedness project, the Wind River Reservation is also working on a water supply and storage study and an agricultural resource management plan. Cottenoir said all three projects, while distinct, will support and inform one another. He hopes this multifaceted drought planning effort will create a template for other Missouri Basin tribes.

An ecological anthropologist by training, McNeeley said the collaborative, iterative nature of this project—involving the Wind River community in the process from the beginning and throughout—is fundamentally different from other approaches. “The new buzzword is co-production. And so we’re really co-producing the entire project from top to bottom with the tribes themselves,” said McNeeley.

While the distributed network of far-flung partners can make meetings challenging (a March workshop fell victim to weather when a big snowstorm closed the roads from Casper), the strength of those partnerships drives the work on the reservation, McNeeley said, “having the tribes really front and center, leading the direction of the science that we do.”

By Ariana Brocious

Ariana Brocious is a reporter for NET News in Nebraska. She reported this story while working on the Platte Basin Timelapse project.

Ranchers today in the Upper Green River Basin say they are modern-day beavers. Typically, tributaries to the Green River, fed by mountain snowmelt, surge in May and June and dwindle to nearly nothing in late summer and fall. However, as ranchers divert water out of these streams to flood fields and irrigate native hay for winter livestock fodder, the water seeps into the soil and makes its way slowly back to the streams later in the summer. That process, slowing the water as it moves downstream, mimics how beaver dams, once abundant in the area, trap water and let it seep out through the summer.

Although ranchers have long believed that flooding fields benefits wildlife through increases in late season flow, nobody had proved it. In fall of 2013, University of Wyoming Agricultural and Applied Economics master’s student Spencer Blevins set out to do just that. Blevins’ goal was to take a first step toward placing a dollar value on the non-agricultural benefits of flood irrigation. How much are those benefits worth to people who enjoy hunting, fishing, and birding?

Members of UW faculty involved in the Upper Green River Basin Conservation Exchange, an ongoing effort to establish a market for private investment in ecosystem services, guided Blevins’ work. The exchange will pay ranchers for the ecosystem services their ranches provide. Blevins’ study was designed to determine whether the non-agricultural benefits of flood irrigation were significant enough that a conservation investor might be willing to pay for them.

Several factors could change irrigation practices in the Upper Green River Basin, with potential repercussions for stream flows throughout the summer. Some ranchers face economic incentives to subdivide their land for residential development, in which case irrigation stops altogether. Alternatively, if hay prices go up, ranchers could face economic pressure to adopt more efficient irrigation technology such as center-pivot. Sprinklers, currently not economical in this landscape, deliver water efficiently and make it worthwhile if the crop warrants the extra expense. Meanwhile, water users downstream in the Colorado River Basin are piloting programs to pay upstream irrigators to use less water or forego diversions altogether. That could provide new economic pressure to fallow lands in the Upper Green River Basin.

Blevins’ study examined these three scenarios—increased residential development, increased use of center pivots, and increased fallowing—and asked how the water use and altered return flow patterns from each would affect agricultural value (revenues from growing hay minus the costs) and recreational value (tourism dollars associated with trout fishing).

His research focused on the New Fork Irrigation District in Sublette County north of Pinedale. This irrigation district is in an alluvial aquifer system where porous gravel and sand layers allow water that soaks into the land to flow underground to the streambed. This is one of the few areas in Wyoming where return flow patterns have been scientifically documented. University of California at Berkeley hydrologist Luna Leopold, who made his summer home on the New Fork Irrigation District, joined Wyoming hydrologist J. H. Wetstein to measure the district’s return flows in 1989. They determined that of the water diverted for agriculture in June and July, approximately 70 percent returns to the New Fork River, primarily later in the agricultural season when flows would otherwise be lower.

Blevins’ study asked three questions in turn. First, how would land use changes affect return flow on the New Fork? Blevins used the results of the Wetstein study to estimate the effects of changing land use—pivot irrigation, residential development, and fallowing—on return flow patterns. For example, pivot irrigation results in less late-season return flow than flood irrigation because it applies less water in the first place and because plants take up more of that water.

Second, how would the altered return flow affect key species? Blevins looked at brown trout (as an indicator species) because Wyoming Game and Fish Department manages the New Fork as a brown trout fishery. In 1979, biologists Allen Binns and Fred Eisermann quantified the relationship between important habitat attributes, such as water temperature and late-season stream flows, and abundance of brown trout, measured in pounds per mile of stream.

Finally, how would changes in key species abundance affect recreational opportunities, and thus tourism revenues, in the region? Blevins could have surveyed anglers to determine how much money they spend locally on fishing trips. Rather than go to this expense, however, he used results from such studies performed elsewhere in the Intermountain West to approximate the economic impact of having more or fewer brown trout in the New Fork.

Blevins also calculated net profit (revenues minus costs) to the private landowner from each of the four land uses.

Effects of Different Land Uses on Agricultural and Recreational Values

* Center-pivot scenario assumes per-acre yields of 1.5 tons and 50% subsidy on center-pivot installation. Installation costs spread over 10 years at a 6% interest rate. ** Pasture rental rate (NASS 2015).

Blevins found that agricultural value is highest under the flood irrigation scenario. Ranchers who keep the land in agriculture get the best deal economically by continuing flood irrigation. Native hay yield would have to increase to approximately 1.5 tons per acre—an unlikely 50 percent increase—to give ranchers the necessary economic incentive to switch to center pivot (based on an assumption that to install a pivot system, ranchers would require a 50 percent subsidy, available in the northern Rocky Mountains). Alternatively, downstream water users would have to pay ranchers at least $30 per acre, according to Blevins’ analysis, to incentivize them to fallow acres and stop irrigating altogether. Meanwhile, residential development remains a temptation: on some properties, the economic incentives for residential development outweigh those for keeping land in agriculture. Conservation easements cover a few properties in the area, precluding residential development, but other properties could be converted to rural housing.

The most important result from the analysis was that recreational value is also highest under the flood irrigation scenario. People who want to keep trout streams healthy in the Upper Green area might be willing to pay ranchers to keep flood irrigating. Such an incentive could become necessary if demand for residential development is strong.

Blevins conducted this analysis using simple calculations in an Excel spreadsheet. The numbers should not be interpreted as universally accurate estimates for each acre on the New Fork. Rather, Blevins’ research is a thought piece, laying out a framework for how one might go about translating changes in late-season flows to dollar values.

The list of additional considerations associated with these results is long. For example, Blevins’ study quantifies the recreational values associated with late-season flows only for brown trout, leaving out benefits to other riparian wildlife. More research would be required to quantify results for other bird and fish species.

There is a great deal to be learned from this study nonetheless. Blevins has shown that the non-agricultural benefits of flood irrigating are potentially quite significant and comparable in magnitude to revenues from alternative land uses. If managers or conservation groups find a way to compensate private landowners for the full benefits their flood irrigation provides, it could affect their future land use decisions. “Wasteful” flood irrigation is not so wasteful after all, at least in a mountain valley with alluvial soils such as the New Fork, and in fact helps everyone from ranchers to trout to fishing guides, in unexpected ways.

By Spencer Blevins, Kristi Hansen, Ginger Paige, and Anne MacKinnon

Spencer Blevins is a former graduate student and Kristi Hansen is Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Ginger Paige is Associate Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, and Anne MacKinnon is Adjunct Professor in the Haub School of the Environment, all at the University of Wyoming. This research was supported in part by the Walton Family Foundation through the Ruckelshaus Institute’s Western Water Initiative.

Further reading

Spencer Blevins. Valuing the Non-Agricultural Benefits of Flood Irrigation in the Upper Green River Basin. Master’s thesis, University of Wyoming, November 2015.

Allen Binns, and Fred Eiserman. “Quantification of Fluvial Trout Habitat in Wyoming.” Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 108, no. 3 (1979): 215-228.

J. H. Wetstein, V. R. Hasfurther, and G. L. Kerr. “Irrigation Diversions and Return Flows – Pinedale.” Cheyenne: Wyoming Water Development Commission, 1989.

On May 31, 2015, a half dozen brightly colored rafts slipped past the Split Mountain take out at the bottom of Gates of Lodore on Utah’s Green River and drifted downstream toward the Uinta Basin. Jon Bowler, a University of Wyoming graduate student in planning, water resources, and environment and natural resources, captained the flotilla. He aimed to float this little-known stretch of river and fill in what he referred to as “the hole in the map.” Early writings and river maps mentioned the stretch, but later editions of those same maps deleted the reference. Today, while river-runner reference materials abound for the up- and downstream sections of the Green, very little information is available about floating in this section. Bowler had become obsessed with the unmapped and undescribed Uinta Basin. Would it be overrun with mosquitos? Bereft of campsites? Pummeled by wind? Guarded by angry landowners? He didn’t know what to expect.

On board were other graduate students, a trained research team, and a film crew from Rig to Flip, a river advocacy group. This was one segment of a 30-day research expedition Bowler had organized to gather data for his thesis project assessing recreation management on the Green River from Flaming Gorge Dam to Lake Powell. His goal was to compare how several different agencies—the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, three Bureau of Land Management Offices, and two National Park Service units—managed the river, and to look for ways to make it easier for boaters to float from one administrative unit into the next and link up the whole 456-mile-long trip.

“This is our Grand Canyon experience in the Upper Basin,” he said, comparing the journey to the highly coveted 280-mile run from Glen Canyon Dam to Lake Mead downstream. (Glen Canyon Dam marks the boundary between the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River watershed, of which the Green is a major tributary.)

Over the following days, the crew slowly made its way down the wide, flat, greenish-brown river. Center-pivot-irrigated fields abutted the banks amidst yellow badlands, and private land made camping tricky. Bowler and his team explored potential public campsites and roads at the river’s edge, marking them on GPS units. He kept an eye out for the usual boating infrastructure—information signs, pit toilets, boat ramps, etc.—that he’d mapped on other sections of the river, but found almost none.

Lower down, the trip started to change. Sprinklers gave way to pump jacks and tanks for the oil and gas fields. The crew found campsites aplenty on the BLM land. They saw pictographs left on the rocks by ancient people, and drifted under clouds of swallows nesting in the overhanging cliffs. This area seemed at once protected and vulnerable.

“Utah is looking for a land trade,” Bowler said, about the state’s ambition to take state control of federal lands. “The lower Uinta Basin is in limbo.”

Bowler had spent the summer before scouting other sections of the river and interviewing recreational boaters about their experiences. From that, he was able to describe some of the river characteristics rafters require, such as boating information signs at the river, user-friendly access points to launch and take out from, ample camping sites, manageable rapids or flat water, and a sense of wildness. He found the Uinta Basin, especially its lower section, met those requirements.

“It’s not stunning, but it’s comparable to the first 40 or 50 miles of Labyrinth Canyon,” he said, referencing a popular stretch of the Green downstream. “You have solitude, wild horses, gorgeous low bluffs. … These days, with the difficulty of getting permits for some rivers, this is an invaluable resource.”

At the end of the Uinta Basin, the party—with crew members leaving and joining at various points along the way—reentered known territory, continuing through Desolation Canyon and on down to eventually reach the Colorado River and Lake Powell at the end of the 30-day journey. Bowler, a most passionate river rat, squeezed in another eight days on southern Utah’s San Juan River before heading back to the university with his maps, GPS units, photos, and notes.

Now he’s putting the finishing touches on his master’s thesis, which will include a description of the techniques he used to assess recreational potential along the river, and his results and management recommendations. He’s promised to share it with the new river manager in Dinosaur National Monument, just upstream of the Uinta Basin, who is particularly interested in Bowler’s surveys of river runners. The monument’s current river plan was written in 1979, years before Bowler was born. “Pack rafts break the regulations,” Bowler said. “They have new trends to consider.” He hopes his data will help the monument refine its management approaches.

More importantly, though, Bowler sees the “river community” as his main audience. This winter, he plans to compile his Uinta Basin maps along with writings from the old timers who floated that section in the 70s and 80s, and make the information freely available. He doesn’t care about selling a guidebook. Rather, he feels the river needs appreciation from boaters.

“This section has a potential to be a special place. It is deserving and capable,” Bowler said. “I’m confused that you don’t see boaters down there.” He’d like to see it overrun with families and groups of friends, reveling in the purling eddies, furrowed hills, and desert sunlight. “My dream would be for the BLM to have to put restrictions for use there.”

By Emilene Ostlind

Emilene Ostlind edits Western Confluence magazine.

Water, or perhaps the absence of water, defines the Wyoming landscape and shapes the species that live on it. Big sagebrush (Artemesia tridentata) is one species particularly well adapted to Wyoming’s arid climate. The shrub has two root systems. Shallow lateral roots absorb snowmelt and spring rain. A single long taproot extends straight underground to access deep water in late summer and fall. The plant’s ephemeral leaves grow in the wet spring. In the dry summer months, these leaves fall off to conserve water. The smaller evergreen leaves stay on year round to turn sunlight into food for the plant without letting go of too much water. Thousands of years of adaptation help sagebrush make the most of scarce water in this arid landscape.

Humans, by contrast, have not had time to adapt to the Wyoming climate. Instead, we sculpt the landscape to make it habitable. We build dams, diversions, levies, and irrigation systems to control, store, distribute, and use water. Our success is measured in our towns and agricultural production. As the human population increases and the effects of climate change continue, demand for water will increase, placing more stress on the systems we have created. The changes are great and the time frame is short. We are in the middle of a massive experiment, and we are not sure what the outcome will be. How far will our technology carry us as water supplies change? As water resources are stretched thinner, can we mimic the sagebrush’s strategy for making a livelihood in a spare environment?

Words and photographs by Charlie Reinertsen