Lolo Creek is a medium-sized stream flowing eastward from headwaters on the Idaho-Montana border to a confluence with the Lower Bitterroot River. Lewis and Clark followed Lolo Creek's 30-odd miles in their journey to and from the Pacific Ocean in 1805-1806. Located only a few miles south of Missoula in western Montana, Lolo Creek is pretty to behold but, thanks to humans, is now meager in wild trout populations.

U.S. Highway 12, built in the 1950's, shoved Lolo Creek south of the roadway into a fraction of its original floodplain, turning the creek into a channelized sluiceway that blows out in-stream habitat, facilitates ice movements and erodes the banks and channel. Throw in riparian loss, deforestation, dewatering, sedimentation and long stretches of rip-rap, and you have a wild trout fishery that is in poor shape.

In 2001, the Trout Conservancy began organizing community members in Lolo (pop. 3000) to build

long lasting ownership of the restoration and conservation of Lolo Creek. The Lolo Watershed Group was formed and has met since February 2003. Check out their website at http://lolowatershed.org.

With a primary goal of restoring Lolo Creek's wild trout fishery, the Lolo Watershed Group is dedicated to correcting the myriad problems that plague the stream, including poor trout habitat, massive straightening and severe streambank erosion - even though it may take many years.

Earl Tennant Site - Lolo Creek

Our first restoration project on Lolo Creek was at the Earl Tennant Recreation site in 2005, about 18 miles west of Lolo. A joint project of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MFWP), the Lolo National Forest (LNF) and Trout Conservancy, the Earl Tennant project was chosen because of easy access and trout habitat problems typical of Lolo Creek.

Traci Sylte, hydrologist with the Lolo National Forest, designed the project, and she and Ladd Knotek (fisheries biologist with MFWP) supervised structure placement and other channel work designed to add much needed habitat complexity. The finished project dramatically enhanced available trout habitat, already holds catchable wild trout, and was a great start to restoring Lolo Creek's wild trout fishery.

The Earl Tennant section of Lolo Creek
before the 2005 project - straight and simple,
with very little trout habitat.

In the late 19th century, the upper Lolo Creek watershed, almost 30,000 acres in size, was "checkerboarded" to give away every other heavily-timbered section of land as part of land grants to enable trans-continental railroads. Those private sections were intensively logged in the 1960's-80's, resulting in an extensive road network with dozens of stream crossings. Those crossings were not designed to allow fish movement, and so blocked the access of native trout to spawning areas. In 2004, the Trout Conservancy began a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service/Lolo National Forest, Plum Creek Timber Co., the Montana DEQ and FWP and others to secure funding for over 5 culvert replacements totalling over $300,000. The Trout Conservancy obtained $100,000 in funds used for this effort.

The old #557 culvert, on Granite Creek (a bull trout spawning stream), is shown at left. This 2001 photo reveals the many bad qualities of most of the existing culverts. The culvert width is obviously far less than the stream's width, causing a rapid flow through the culvert and blocking a trout's ability to swim upstream. The narrow width also caused excessive erosion around the culvert's sides, potentially leading to a massive failure and road wash-out. Several dozen culverts in the upper Lolo were like this, leading to the Trout Conservacy's efforts to replace the worst five offenders.

The new #557 culvert, replaced in 2008 and shown at right, incorporates the latest "stream simulation' approach that seeks to preserve the stream intact as it goes under the crossing. Note that the culvert width (about 9 feet) is ample enough to include the entire stream channel. This design allows for the unfettered movement of fish and all aquatic organisms upstream and downstream.

At left is the bridge constructed over the North Fork of Granite Creek (another bull trout spawning stream) in summer 2008. This bridge represents the ultimate stream crossing: the stream flows absolutely unaffected beneath it. The culvert formerly at this site was not only too narrow ("undersized"), but was also 'perched' (the downstream outlet was above the stream level, creating a small waterfall and impassible barrier. Unfortunately, the Forest Service has found that hundreds of other stream crossings in the northern Rockies are equally as bad as this one was.

This was the site (right) in summer 2009. The rip-rapped bank is on the left (south) side of Lolo Creek in this photo.