Cottonwood-Baggs Fish Passage Project

In the late fall of 2019 CFC finished a stream reconnection project on Baggs Creek and Cottonwood Creek in the upper Clark Fork, where 8 miles of stream was opened to fish passage for the first time in many decades. Cottonwood Creek also benefited from a large fish screen project (1st of its kind in Montana!), which will drastically reduce entrainment of juvenile and adult trout.

The project accomplished the following: a) removed the trout migration barrier at Baggs Creek, a tributary to Cottonwood, by lowering the channel 9 feet, and re-naturalizing it, so that the channel now passes underneath the irrigation canal, and is not intercepted by the canal, which formerly entrained Baggs Creek downstream migrating trout; this opened 5 miles of upper Baggs Creek to native trout passage; b) built a new fish-friendly rock weir diversion and headgate on Cottonwood Creek; c) built 300 feet of new canal; d) installed a large (32 cfs) corrugated fish screen on Cottonwood Creek, to eliminate the entrainment of down-stream migrating trout in this irrigation system (we captured 40 wild trout and sculpin in 45 feet of canal during construction—over 400 trout were entrained in total.)

The overall construction cost was $270,436, with additional costs of nearly $90,000 over 3 years for design, permitting, and oversight. Funding provided by Clark Fork Coalition, Montana Natural Resource Damage Program, and U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resource Conservation Service. That’s a lot of money going into the local economy!

Видео Cottonwood-Baggs Fish Passage Project канала clarkforkcoalition