To celebrate its first five years of work, Open Rivers Fund—a program of Resources Legacy Fund, launched in November 2016 with a 10-year, $50-million investment from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation—worked with film director Jason Jaacks to produce a documentary highlighting several dynamic dam removal projects and partnerships that are reshaping waterways across the American […]
Category: Montana
Citizen Scientists Help Document Recovery of Rattlesnake Creek
Rattlesnake Dam removal improves safety, enhances creek and provides recreation opportunities
Chris In The Creek: An Ethnographic Approach To Community Based Monitoring
Western Montana’s Rattlesnake Creek and its many relations – human and more-than-human – are at the heart of our ongoing research-practice partnership between Watershed Education Network (WEN) and the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science. As part of this partnership, I was fortunate enough to visit Missoula this past summer to collect data […]
Dammed if you do, damned if you don’t: Rattlesnake Wilderness presents challenges
Restoring waters & building momentum: 4 years of the Open Rivers Fund
A free-flowing river has an aura of inevitability. As creeks and small streams merge into one, the river finds its way. Left to its own devices, it goes where gravity says it must – scouring its own banks, starting course changes when obstructed, and moving material to rebuild its bed. On its way, gaining volume […]
Crews wrap up final details of historic Rattlesnake Dam removal
Rattlesnake Dam removal is almost complete
The opportunity for native westslope cutthroat and bull trout to move unimpeded up and down Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Mont., is close to reality. Contractors hired by Trout Unlimited, Montana Trout Unlimited, the City of Missoula and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, among other partners, have been working this summer to remove Rattlesnake Dam. The […]
Missoula offers momentum on Rattlesnake Dam removal
With work to remove Missoula’s Rattlesnake Creek Dam now underway, it’s a good time to call attention to the inspiring local partnerships that led to this. There are lessons that can apply across the West. The 60-foot-long dam, in place since 1904, will be removed and the creek restored, giving bull trout, westslope cutthroat and […]