![]() Montana, like most Western states, wrestles with who owns what water and whether "paper rights' correlate with actual use and availability. So why did Montana's Legislature recently ratify a water compact with the Crow Nation that doesn't protect the Bighorn's fish? The answer, like the compact itself, is complex. Given the world-class status of the fishery and the economic value to the state, it would seem an obvious public policy goal to protect this resource. This activity generates $18 million annually in an area where, as one local legislator put it, "the economy sucks." In a state ravaged by boom and bust industries and ranked at the bottom nationally in wages and per capita income, the fishery offers a welcome and much needed form of sustainable economic activity. With up to 7,000 catchable browns and rainbows per mile, it is no wonder this productive waterway hosts more than 100,000 angler days a year. Where buffalo calves once drank from a plains stream, drift boats packed with fly anglers now compete for trout that commonly exceed 4 pounds. But in exchange, cold, clear water pouring from the depths of the 70-mile-long reservoir has created one of the finest wild trout fisheries in the world. Nearly half of the islands and gravel bars that once filled the river's braided channels are gone, their riparian habitat lost to Yellowtail Dam's regulated outflows. And the "furious and formidable" plains grizzlies that terrified the Corps of Discovery are gone, their remnants driven into remote mountain ranges.Įven the Bighorn itself has changed. Crow Indians still speak the language of their ancestors, but the thundering buffalo herds that once formed the center of their "wheel of life" have vanished. Much has changed since Lewis and Clark crossed the uncharted wilderness that was to become Montana. Draining north into Montana, the river transects the Crow Indian reservation, where it is joined by the Little Bighorn, famous as the site of "Custer's Last Stand." Finally, the Bighorn merges with the Yellowstone just downstream from Pompey's Pillar, a rock formation that bears the carved initials from the 1805 Lewis and Clark expedition. Deep in the Wyoming wilderness and high above tree line, glacial cirques collect and funnel pure alpine waters from Cloud Peak's 13,000-foot summit down to the muddy torrent of the Bighorn River. ![]()
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