Fish Facts

“Hope in the Hills”

After discovery of westslope cutthroats in Leverich Creek, biologists find ways to help save the struggling population

By Daniel Person

Chronicle Staff Writer



In the summer of 2006, while posting fire restrictions south of Bozeman, Bruce Roberts noticed something interesting about Leverich Creek. There were fish in there.

“Up until that time, people had told me Leverich was dry,” the U.S. Forest Service fisheries biologist said recently.

At the time, the U.S. Forest Service was putting together a plan to thin and burn thousands of acres of forest around Leverich Creek as part of an effort to protect Bozeman’s watershed from a major forest fire. Roberts was charged with investigating what fish were living in the affected area.

So after that first sighting, Roberts returned to give the stream a closer look, and made yet another interesting discovery: some of the fish in the creek were westslope cutthroat trout.

The only trout native to the Gallatin and Madison drainages, westslope cutthroats have been squeezed out of most of their range by nonnative species. Of about 1,000 miles of river in the Gallatin National Forest that once held cutthroats, Gallatin fisheries biologist Scott Barndt estimated that only 10 miles of river in those drainages contain westslope cutthroat today.

And, Roberts said, the few cutthroats in Leverich Creek — fewer than 250 remained — may have been living on borrowed time when he stumbled upon their tiny refuge.

“From what we could determine, the core population was limited to half a mile of stream with brook trout knocking on the door,” he said.

But there’s new hope for the swimming survivors.

The Gallatin Forest, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Trout Unlimited and private landowners have been moving trails and ridding Leverich Creek of brook trout in an effort to preserve the cutthroats and slightly expand their territory. Brian McNeil, a trails and roads program manager for the forest, said he was already working on rerouting the Leverich Creek trail when Roberts told him there were cutthroat in the stream. As it was, the trail ran close to the stream and crossed it several times, “dumping a lot of sediment into the stream.”

Sediment can be harmful for many types of fish, not just cutthroats, because it can suffocate eggs or young fish.

“It meshed perfectly,” McNeil said of Roberts’ request to reroute the trail. “A new trail was born.”

The Forest Service also revised its watershed project to avoid building any logging roads around the creek, which would also expose the stream to sediment, instead opting to conduct logging by helicopter.

And this August, stakeholders plan to build a culvert impassable by trout in hopes of cordoning off 1.7 miles of stream for the westslope cutthroat. The culvert is expected to cost well into the thousands of dollars, but has not been put out to bid. It will be paid for with the Future Fisheries Grant Program through FWP, with contributions from Trout Unlimited and Gallatin County.

“The big picture is if we’re going to keep westslope cutthroats in the Gallatin drainage, we need to find places have them,” said Barndt. “One catastrophic event can kill a population.”