Every Drop Counts: Wildfire and stream restoration  

By Robin Fedock EBS COLUMNIST 

The realities of life and climate change across the West, and specifically in our corner of southwest Montana, are compounding to increase the threat of wildfires, which are only predicted to grow in size and frequency. Factors like poorly planned development, warmer winters, less snow, biodiversity loss and drought are driving the trend. This risky set of conditions is also straining our already sensitive rivers, streams, groundwater and water supply. As wildfires get worse, our waters become more compromised. In order to adapt to these dangerous feedback loops, it’s critical to consider the close relationship between wildfires and water systems. How can we use what we know about their connection to plan for a more fire-resilient and water-secure future?  

Take water supply, for example: fires that burn through watersheds can leave behind a wake of nasty pollutants and heavy metals that leach into the water supply and are difficult and expensive to filter or treat. Fires also alter the landscape’s vegetation and soil, which can cause erosion and flooding, and help the contaminated water travel fast. So while a local wildfire might only directly impact a small area, its secondary impacts to water quality and water supply could have far-reaching consequences for nearby communities and those downstream.     

So, what can be done? How can we steward the streams, rivers and groundwater in our neck of the woods in a way that helps prevent the spread of wildfires, or at the very least, lessens the severity and longevity of their impact?  

The good news is that stream restoration approaches can also function to reduce the harm from wildfires. In the case of wildfires, a single stream restoration project can offer simultaneous benefits.  

One such multipurpose approach uses low-tech process-based restoration, or LTPBR, and borrows ecological design wisdom from beavers. This animation from Emily Fairfax, who studies beavers and wildfire, illustrates how beaver dams function to raise the water table and direct water flows onto the landscape, effectively creating wetlands, a natural firebreak. “Can’t start a campfire with soggy sticks,” she notes. “Beavers = Firefighters.”  

Fairfax’s research found that “overall, riparian zones with beaver activity were three-times less affected by wildfires compared to riparian zones without beaver activity. In short, places with beavers stayed green. Places without beavers? Not so much.” 

In Big Sky, you can find an effective example of LTPBR along the Middle Fork of the West Fork Gallatin River. The Gallatin River Task Force, working in partnership with Big Sky Resort and Trout Unlimited, used LTPBR and beaver dam analogs to raise the water table and restore the channelized stream and degraded wetland along that stretch of river. While the primary goal of the project was not focused on wildfire prevention and resiliency, the outcomes surely supported these aims.  

LTPBR is a remarkably simple, effective, and low cost approach to stream restoration and wildfire prevention—it allows the natural systems to work as they should. This is why the Task Force is in the process of identifying and mapping this kind of restoration treatment for the main streams in Big Sky: the Middle Fork, North Fork, South Fork, and West Fork. 

Wildfires, rivers, streams, groundwater and our communities are deeply entangled here in southwest Montana, impacting each other in rapidly changing ways. As we continue to learn more about these systems and the problems they both pose and face, it can be useful to consider how they are connected. That connection might just spark a solution.  

Robin Fedock is the communications and marketing manager for the Gallatin River Task Force.