It is spring! I know Mother Nature is trying to convince us otherwise with blankets of snow and one last touch of serious frost. Nevertheless, eventually the ice and snow will give way to sprouting grass, grain and other crops popping from the ground, lambs and calves full of energy, and water coming from thousands of small creeks and coulees to swell the Missouri River.

After what has seemed like years of meetings, conference calls, presentations, phone calls, and letters, Montana’s $57 million Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) has been amended to make it more user-friendly. CREP assists farmers and ranchers in improving the water quality within a two-mile wide corridor long the Missouri and Madison River systems. The total project area reaches more than 500 miles from Hebgen Dam to the Fred Robinson Bridge, encompassing over 338,000 private land acres.

By Gayla Wortman Oehmcke

I think it must have been about 1999 when it all started. In the summer maybe; perhaps a very warm day with no wind to disturb the petunias carefully planted next to the sidewalk. It was a pivotal moment in the long history of Montana’s conservation districts. It was when the Yellowstone River found itself in the nation’s fish bowl because it was the “last free flowing river”.

After a round of public comments and meetings with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representatives, the six Conservation Districts surrounding the CMR National Wildlife Refuge have been provided one seat as a cooperating agency on the Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) Planning Team. The seat, currently held by Council Coordinator Vicki Marquis with Mike McKeever from the Garfield County CD serving as an alternate, is especially important as it provides an avenue for Conservation Districts, and therefore the private landowners they serve, to provide grassroots input throughout the CCP process. The CCP, which will take at least 3 years to draft and finalize, will govern management of the Refuge for the next 15 years – taking it into the year 2026!

Elevating the CDs to cooperating agency status also marks a noteworthy accomplishment for the Council—formal relationship and cooperation with the three federal agencies that manage more than half of Montana’s Missouri River corridor. From the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, which is managed by the BLM to the Refuge to the Fort Peck Dam which is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, work with federal agencies has been a top priority for the Council.

The 1.1 million acre CMR Refuge, which is the second largest in the lower 48 states, was established by Executive Order 7509 dated December 11, 1936 (see inset) and has been managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service since 1976. The Refuge includes 125 miles of the Missouri River and completely surrounds the Fort Peck Reservoir.

The CCP process for the Refuge began with a round of public meetings and a “scoping” comment period. The “Scoping Report”, which compiles those comments, is now available online at www.fws.gov/cmr . Out of the more than 24,000 comments received, 23,753 were form letters from the Wilderness Society, 81 were individual letters, and 23 were comments from agencies and organizations. The comments were organized in the following categories for further consideration during the planning process: Habitat and Wildlife Management; Public uses and Access; Wilderness; Socioeconomics; Water Resources; Partnerships, Collaboration, and Consultation; and Cultural values, Traditions, and Resources.

Regular meetings, open communication, stakeholder involvement, technical reports, and quantitative studies—all ingredients for a sustainable solution to most natural resource concerns—but will it be enough to kick the Whitmore Ravine issue off the fencepost and onto the road toward a solution?

• Riparian habitats of the western United States are confined to less than 1% of the land

• Nearly 90% of Montana’s breeding birds are known to use riparian areas

• Of the 54 species of birds known to use the Madison and Missouri River corridors, 19 species are decreasing in population, 29 are not changing, and only 6 species are actually increasing

• Most biologists recommend a riparian forest width of at least 230 feet