UYWG in the Field
Explore Some of Our Current Projects
Community Engagement
Meetings, Field Trips, & More
Community engagement is a core part of the UYWG mission. Through conversations, active-listening, events, hands-on education, and other activities, UYWG works to engage people in the Upper Yellowstone watershed—its natural systems, culture, and community.
Annual activities include monthly membership and committee meetings, organized special events (i.e. 2022 Flood meetings), and field trips (weed education & certifications).
Ongoing communications include monthly “Fencelines & Eddies newsletters and website.
To get involved, join our mailing list and get engaged with your watershed.
Working Lands
Paradise Valley Working Lands Group
Paradise Valley Fence Damage Survey-2024
Landowner-Hunter Access Survey-2023
Elk in Paradise - Conserving Migratory Wildlife and Working Lands in Paradise Valley
The Paradise Valley Working Lands Group provides a forum for ranchers and other owners of working lands to convene and discuss approaches and actions that benefit and conserve the agriculture, open space, rural character, and natural resources of Montana’s Paradise Valley.
The Group meets regularly during the “off-season” — those imaginary months of winter when ranchers might have time between Fall sales and Spring calving to gather as a community to discussess matters of common interest.
Innovative programs such as the Brucellosis Compensation Fund and Paradise Valley Fence Fund are a response to priorities presented at PVWLG meetings.
Druska Kinkie serves as chair and Whitney Tilt as coordinator. PERC provides support for the coordinator’s postion and meeting costs. To learn more, contact Whitney Tilt at wtilt@perc.org.
From conversations and research with landowners in Paradise Valley, the issue of wildlife-related property damage is recognized as a significant concern. For example, the Elk in Paradise study found the vast majority of respondents reporting property damage to be a significant or a growing challenge. And wildlife, especially elk, perennially damaging fences was the #1 concern.
At the January 2024 meeting of the Paradise Valley Working Lands Group, it was agreed that PERC would work with ranchers and other landowners to develop a “fence fund” concept. And, as a first step, survey landowners to determine the scope of wildlife-caused damage incurred and the type of fence repair assistance that landowners would find most useful.
Hunting access to private lands is an oft-discussed topic in Montana. Concerns range from privatization of wildlife by landowners to poor hunter conduct. From discussions with Paradise Valley landowners, including research resulting in the Elk in Paradise report by PERC in 2020, it was clear that many landowners provide some level of hunting access to the public, but the extent and nature of that access remained to be quantified.
In January 2023, the Paradise Valley Working Lands Group, with the assistance of PERC and OneMontana, conducted a survey of landowners to establish an understanding of the level and nature of hunting access and landowner attitudes toward hunting, specifically elk and other big game.
The responsibility and financial burden of providing crucial habitat for these species largely falls on the valley’s private landowners—yet landowners often feel their perspectives are not adequately heard. This report presents findings from an extensive survey and numerous discussions with landowners in Paradise Valley, which reveal landowner attitudes toward wildlife and point the way to solutions that can support landowners and wildlife in the valley.
The report finds that elk in particular present real and large challenges for landowners in Paradise Valley—including competition with livestock for forage and hay, damage to fences, and disease transmission. As elk spend more time on private lands in the valley, and in greater numbers, tolerance often wears thin. Many landowners feel that the public benefits they provide are too often overlooked by the state and federal land management agencies, hunters, and the general public that often shape wildlife policies.
Fish and Wildlife
Bears and Attractants
The Upper Yellowstone serves as a key wildlife corridor for a wide range of wildlife, including grizzly and black bears. The area’s low-density housing contains attractants like trash, chicken coops, bee hives, and livestock carcasses. Landowners in Tom Miner Basin and other areas in the Corwin Basin and southern Paradise Valley have been actively using best practices to minimize grizzly bear conflicts for years, but conflicts are growing in the rest of Paradise Valley as grizzly bears expand their numbers and their range. Preventive infrastructure like bear proof trash cans for residents, securing the green box sites, and electric fencing are paramount to avoiding conflicts and keeping our community and bears safe alike.
As the experience of FWP Grizzly Bear Specialist, Jeremiah Smith, makes clear, the top priority for a community to coexist with bears is to prevent the animals from gaining unintentional access to attractants—from bone piles and unsecured animal feed to chicken coops and residential garbage.
The focus of UYWG’s efforts is to aggressively build on efforts by Park County, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other groups to remove or separate would-be bear attractants from the bears. Along with the efforts of Bear Aware Gardiner and others, our joint, cooperative goal in 2025 will work to:
Secure the Trail Creek and Forest Service/South Livingston Green Box sites.
Engage and educate residents on how to keep attractants secured and prevent common activities (such as feeding birds and barbequing) from becoming attractants.
Create a “Garbage Busters Team” of volunteers equipped with the training, supplies and coordination to help Paradise Valley residents quickly and effectively fence off attractants and provide bear resistant garbage cans when conflicts arise.
Help local businesses identify and secure attractants with needed infrastructure, and educate employees and customers on proper bear safe practices.
Help fund a full-time coordinator, as success of this project, from start to finish, requires a knowledgeable person who knows the region, knows the issue, and works well with people.
Water
Upper Yellowstone Watershed Study
With the assistance of the UYWG and numerous landowners, Montana DNRC Hydrologist, John Lunzer, is leading a multi-year study to develop a water balance for the Upper Yellowstone Watershed and a hydraulic and systems model that will improve forecasting capability and support local drought planning efforts.
Of particular interest is an improved understanding of how the Park Branch Canal system interacts with the valley’s hydrology. The Park Branch is the valley’s main irrigation supply responsible for irrigating 7,300 acres via over a 100+ miles of canal, ditch, and laterals.
The study established irrigation and stream gages as well as groundwater monitoring wells. By examining these data along with historic returns and canal seepage, the study documented the canal’s strong ties to the aquifer and its “rebound” benefit of return colling waters during the late season.
A preliminary summary is available here and the final report is expected in 2025
Recreation & Stewardship
River Recreational Use Study
In 2020, we began a cooperative project to collect baseline data (who, what, where, to what extent) on recreational use of the river.
The project was developed with the active involvement of river users and the community including professional fishing guides, local businesses, riparian property owners, universities, and state and federal land management agencies. The collaborative nature of this study was central to the study’s design, implementation, and findings.
Three distinct sets of data were compiled to establish a recreational use baseline: camera captures of river use; occupancy counts of vehicles and trailers at river access sites, and surveys of river users and riparian landowners. With no previous recreational use data available, this study establishes a baseline of recreational use from which future measurements can be compared.
The study presents a set of recommendations, intended to spark discussion, revision, and additions. Going forward the community of river users and other interests need to wade in on such questions as “do we want improvements to access sites that would likely increase usage?” and “how will increased usage impact the resource?” Any and all next steps will require the talents and cooperation of the full river community to prioritize and implement
Check out our time-lapse videos to get a sense of recreatinal use on the river.