MUSSELSHELL RIVER | MARTINSDALE, MONTANA

NORTH FORK MUSSELSHELL RIVER

Initial inventory of the river suggested decades of overgrazing and poor land management practices. The river looked like a long-forgotten canal, with very few bank lines that weren’t actively eroding. The sedimentation from the eroding bank lines was severe enough to create an observable change in turbidity between the top and bottom of the property. It became obvious early on that the river no longer wetted the floodplain during flooding. With all that excessive stream power and the fine soil nature of the bank lines, intervention was a must.

MRD and Headwaters Engineering designed a channel that would reconnect to the floodplain at an appropriate frequency. The design included raising the bed elevation at the start of the channel to facilitate that connection. Though enhanced fishing was the landowner’s objective, this project illustrated that better fishing becomes a byproduct of a design intended for more systemic resource restoration. The landowner engaged Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks to electrofish the project reach before the project to establish baseline conditions. One short year after completion, the first year of post-project sampling was conducted, and found a significant increase in all age classes of trout.

The project was finished in November, and that next March experienced very significant flooding — before the transplanted sod mats even had a chance to take root. The channel performed as intended, and no remedial work was required in the channel relocation reach of the project — a testimony to the resilience and stability of a thoughtfully designed and executed river project. The landowner’s enthusiasm for the success of phase 1, led MRD to create habitat intervention along 2.5 additional miles of the river. The landowner continues to be thrilled with the results.