By Kayla Heinze, Communications and Outreach Coordinator
Rivers change fast. Right now, spring runoff has many of the Northern Rockies’ major waterways—like the Clark Fork, Kootenai and Yellowstone rivers—flowing quick and strong. The riparian corridors along them that wide-roaming species like grizzly bears utilize are lush and green. But some things about this special place change much slower. One, in fact, hadn’t changed much at all for 66 to 100 million years, until recently.
White sturgeon, this continent’s largest freshwater fish, established itself as a species in the Late Cretaceous period when dinosaurs like Triceratops still wandered what is now the American West. They have remained largely the same since then, opportunistically feeding on crayfish, worms, fish eggs and more on the bottoms of rivers like the Kootenai. For a fish that can live to nearly 100 years, the last century has brought rapid and devastating changes. The combined impacts of overfishing, warming water temperatures and dams and other development have devastated their populations to the point of warranting an endangered listing for their landlocked Kootenai River population under the Endangered Species Act.
The white sturgeon’s critical habitat in the Kootenai River lies within and alongside two grizzly bear recovery areas. In this corridor, Vital Ground is actively protecting and restoring habitat, including projects directly on the Kootenai that are specifically designed to benefit sturgeon through improving shoreline health. The story of sturgeon and our role in their conservation is just one example of the “umbrella species effect”, the broad ecological benefits that come from having grizzlies on the landscape and protecting the habitat they need to thrive.
A recent volunteer project for Vital Ground compiled habitat data on three native fish species—Kootenai white sturgeon, bull trout and redband trout—to map overlaps with areas that our strategic One Landscape Initiative has identified as important for grizzly bear conservation. As we have previously done with imperiled bird species, this ongoing data project helps us visualize and specify the umbrella impact. Other species that stand to benefit due to their significant overlap with grizzly bear range include mountain lions, wolverines, Canada lynx and gray wolves.
Protecting and restoring habitat for fish
The Northern Rockies’ native fish populations are culturally and ecologically important, but many are facing a combination of threats similar to those endangering the sturgeon of the Kootenai. Just like bears, fishes’ presence in our ecosystem is precious and valuable for a wide range of reasons—for their own sake and beauty, for the health they indicate and create in our waters, as well as their irreplaceable roles in the lives of other species, including ours.
The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, with whom we are partnering on a restoration project along the river’s shoreline, has a long-standing relationship with Kootenai sturgeon as an important source of food and connection. Native fish species have fed people’s bodies and hearts in the Northern Rockies from time immemorial to the present. Diverse groups ranging from Indigenous anglers and passionate local recreationists to rural communities and economically-invigorating tourists are sustained by them.
Equally as foundational to our collective well-being is the clean water that native fish presence indicates. Where they thrive, we can be assured our rivers are healthful. Perhaps the most iconic exemplar of this fact are bull trout. The embryos of these predatory fish are highly sensitive to sediments and pollutants in the water, and throughout their life cycle they need cold temperatures and complex structures like logs and side channels to thrive.
The Montana State Field Guide states that, “Bull Trout may be considered the Grizzly Bear of the fish world in relationship to its need for unaltered habitat.”
Bull trout distribution in the Flathead and Clark Fork watersheds overlaps with many crucial riparian corridors for bears. In the Cabinet-Yaak and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, both designated recovery areas for grizzlies, bull trout stand to benefit from Vital Ground projects that protect stream-side acres from development. Our forest stewardship work at places like Bull River shades waterways and prevents runoff. This helps the river remain cool and clear for these fish that are specialized for just those conditions—conditions that, with your support, we can hopefully keep as part of the Northern Rockies’ waterscape for a long time to come.
River connectivity and the threats facing native trout
Another similarity between native fish and their mammalian counterparts is their need for connectivity. Whether between mountain ranges and valleys or rivers and their tributaries, protecting the ability of animals of all kinds to move unobstructed is an essential component of conservation. Redband trout, a unique subspecies of the more widespread rainbow trout, are demonstrating the dire consequences of that unmet need and also the complexity of what connectivity can bring for threatened species on our modern landscapes.
Dams and other barriers, such as areas of concentrated pollution or culverts, have cut redband off from accessing portions of their historic range. In the Northern Rockies, they now exist in isolated populations, one in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem, one west of the Selkirks and one northwest of the Bitterroots, facing the same threat of diminishing genetic diversity as the isolated grizzly populations in some of those same places.
However, with the reality of non-native fish species overtaking many of our rivers and creeks, aquatic connectivity can be a risk, as much as a help, to native fish. Many of our native trout populations, like the remaining redband, are drastically threatened by introduced species through competition for resources and genetic erasure of hybridization. Some of the remaining redband fisheries are losing their genetic integrity and identity as they interbreed with non-native species. Over time, redband could entirely lose the unique traits, creations of thousands of years of partnership with the Northern Rockies’ beautiful waters, that make them redband.
The status of native fish is an undeniably bleak situation. Ensuring the places their populations do remain are as wild and healthful as possible is essential in order to give them refuge from and a fighting chance against this onslaught of threats. By supporting conservation and restoration focused on the grizzly populations that these fish have shared the landscape with for countless generations, you are helping Vital Ground act as an ally to these precious members of our ecological community and shared river systems.
Grizzly conservation has broad benefits
Hidden below the surface but for their brief rises for food or in an angler’s net, it can be far too easy to overlook the well-being of our native fish neighbors. The same is true for many of the other species protected under the grizzly conservation umbrella: native reptiles, insects, amphibians, birds, and elusive mammals. As beings who all rely on the same shared resources and habitats, whether they move through them by sky, water or land, what’s good for one is often good for many, including us.
By tracking how our grizzly priority areas align with those of other species, like the native fish in our rivers, we can better target our projects to create broad benefits. We know your support of Vital Ground is a testament not just to your love for grizzlies but for the entire web of life they are a part of. Our projects take a holistic approach to account for the entire ecosystem, including the precious waters that sustain the lives of bears, fish, people and so much more.
The rivers may change quickly—cutting new channels each year, rising and falling with the seasons—and even the species that call them home will continue to evolve and adapt. What we work for at Vital Ground, and what you enable as a conservation supporter, is the consistency and guarantee of wildlife’s continued presence on our shared landscapes and in our waterways. Our love for and commitment to protecting everything from sturgeon and trout to bears and birds will remain a constant force, no matter what else changes.