15 hours Ago By DUNCAN ADAMS [email protected]
No one can say for sure. Is George Grant spinning in his grave or celebrating a new alliance that might benefit his beloved Big Hole? The Big Hole River Foundation was founded in 1988 by celebrated Montana conservationist, angler and fly-tier George Grant, a Butte native. Grant died in 2008 at the age of 102.
Now, the Big Hole River Foundation is folding as a separate entity and its executive director, Brian Wheeler, is joining Save Wild Trout, a program of the Upper Missouri Waterkeeper. Wheeler, who has collected water quality data for the foundation for about five years, will be full-time program director for Save Wild Trout. Brian Wheeler, who has been the executive director of the Big Hole River Foundation, fills a container while collecting water quality samples on the Big Hole River in August 2023.
The former program director, Wade Fellin, weighed in. He co-owns the Big Hole Lodge and is a fishing guide for the Big Hole. “The Big Hole River Foundation name and organizational framework will sunset, but our mission and momentum will grow,” Fellin said.
“Our current water quality and macroinvertebrate work will continue on the Big Hole, and funding has been specifically earmarked for it. “We’ll expand our water quality monitoring model across the Jefferson Basin, bringing consistent, high-quality science to other urgently needing rivers in addition to the Big Hole,” he said. Wade Fellin, a lodge owner and fishing outfitter on the Big Hole River and one of the founders of Save Wild Trout.
In a news release, Save Wild Trout said the foundation’s water quality monitoring program will expand to all four rivers of the Jefferson River Basin, including the Big Hole, the Beaverhead, the Ruby and Jefferson rivers. Fellin said Save Will Trout “is a coalition of river advocates, concerned citizens, anglers, guides, outfitters and businesses focused on holistic scientific investigation into water quality in our rivers and advocating for science-based solutions critical to restoring and conserving wild trout fisheries.” Wheeler has been executive director for the Big Hole River Foundation since 2019.
He was asked what he has valued about working for the nonprofit. “Everything,” Wheeler replied. “The river and communities around it are special.
Just driving up and down the river for years while sampling [water quality]; can't beat the scenery. “It's been really fulfilling to have a role in monitoring river health, establishing an historic record and building and refining a program that wouldn't otherwise exist,” he said. “Truly the ‘Last, Best Place.
’ I'm not going anywhere.” Wheeler said people have asked in recent years why the water quality monitoring he was doing in the Big Hole wasn’t happening elsewhere. He said it wasn’t feasible to expand the program through the Big Hole River Foundation.
“A lot of conversations reflected the view that a water quality program at the basin-scale, modeled after the BHRF program, would represent a very logical next step of our work,” Wheeler said. “That, if moved under the umbrella of a larger organization, the possibility of establishing a Jefferson Basin water quality program would become viable. “So, it seemed like a golden opportunity to ride the momentum of our well-established model, scale it up to meet bigger needs and hopefully help provide more good data to the folks in resource management so they can make informed decisions,” he said.
Earlier this week, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality rejected a petition, submitted by Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and the Big Hole River Foundation, to designate portions of the Big Hole River as impaired because of nutrients pollution. DEQ cited a need for more data, much of which the petitioners insist had already been submitted. The petitioners said the nutrients pollution has caused algae blooms, which can be harmful to fish and other aquatic life.
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