Faced with an uncertain future, farmers and ranchers are figuring out new ways to help protect and conserve their precious water supply.
Oxbow Cattle Company lies in an unsuspecting agricultural corridor within Missoula, Montana, city limits. Just past a Walmart on a busy road, the ranch sits in a valley of open rangeland nestled in the Sapphire Mountains. Until recently, nearby Miller Creek was a textbook example of the impacts of more than a century of watershed degradation. The year before Bart Morris and his wife Wendy became the owners of the ranch, Miller Creek was listed by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for temperature and sediment impairments. But when the Morrises purchased the property in 2017 through a conservation easement, the first order of business was fixing the creek’s damage.
In the dim light of the early morning, Morris walks through the crisp air with a mallet, stakes, and chicken wire. When he arrives at Miller Creek, which runs through his 75 acres, he’s delighted to see that the willows have held strong through the winter. Morris starts to mend the fence that runs along the creek’s bank, protecting the riparian area from hungry cattle, elk, and deer. The work is unrelenting at times, but Morris says it is well worth it, with Miller Creek serving as “the lifeblood” to his ranching operations.
Missoula, like many other towns in the American West, has numerous scars from yesteryear’s agriculture etched into its waterways. The channelizing of tributaries—where canals, ditches, or levies re-routed water for human use, has had cascading effects on both watersheds and the landscapes connected to them. But to evolve the unsustainable practices of their farming forefathers, some Montana producers like Morris are cultivating a quickly emerging ethic of responsible water stewardship.
“Being sustainable isn’t good enough,“ Morris said. ”To keep working in agriculture, we have to fix these problems we have left over from the past.“
The Landscape’s Lifeblood
Farming activities, like harvesting and livestock movement, are exempt from Clean Water Act regulations because, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, farms across America depend on clean and reliable water. Despite this hall pass, Morris is one producer that is working to leave the land better than he found it—and says that caring for the creek has had a positive cascading effect on his bottom line.
“The power of observation is your biggest asset as a rancher,” he said. “What it has told me is that doing right ecologically pays off economically. You can’t rob the land and expect it to pay you back.”
In the summer of 2024, after a historically low snowpack that wreaked havoc for agriculture across Montana, Miller Creek didn’t reach the Morrises’ ranch until August. The impacts for Oxbow’s operations were significant, with Bart and Wendy spending an estimated $7,000 to run irrigation hoses, and still only yielding a third of the hay they would in a typical year. With an even lower snowpack experienced in 2026, some ranchers in the Western U.S. are trepidatious for what’s to come this summer.
Morris believes that Oxbow’s best defensive strategy is to undo some of the damage of the past. Working with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Services to convert their irrigation to a more sustainable operation and even converting their senior surface water rights to a groundwater right, Morris hopes to preserve the natural system of Miller Creek. By leaving previously diverted water in the creek, he also hopes to protect waterways from soil erosion, fertilizer runoff, and nutrient leaching—which in turn can boost a suite of ecological benefits for the watershed as a whole.
“The power of observation is your biggest asset as a rancher. What it has told me is that doing right ecologically pays off economically.“
“Water dictates how we graze this land,” Morris said. “For what we can control, we want to do right by the creek.”
The Morrises‘ commitment to watershed stewardship stands in contrast to a growing national debate over livestock’s impact on the West’s waterways—particularly with the Trump administration expanding grazing on public lands. Conservation advocates have long pointed to grazing as a driver of ruined riparian areas, eroded streambanks, and declining biodiversity. At the same time, ranchers argue that they are indispensable stewards of open space and that they can help sustain and even support ecological balance. This tension is exemplified in the prolific “Cows vs. Condos” debate —a long-running conversation about whether protecting ranchlands is more important than new residential and commercial development.
But there is plenty of fertile ground for helping ecological and economic pursuits align for producers, particularly in a state where 90% of privately owned land is agricultural. Organizations like Montana Land Reliance have been at the forefront of tapping this potential, working with ranchers and farmers to sign conservation easements, which are legally binding agreements that permanently restrict subdivision, plowing, or building on certain areas. As of 2025, the Montana Land Reliance has preserved over 74,000 acres—more than the combined total of all 49 other states.
In the ways of water, non-profit Trout Unlimited (TU)‘s Priority Waters initiative has helped restore and reconnect 787 stream miles in Montana in collaboration with local partners and state and federal agencies, like Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP). FWP’s Future Fisheries Improvement Program works in a similar vein by helping fund projects, like TU’s, that specifically focus on revitalized fish passage and conditions for cold-water aquatic species. Many of these repaired watersheds are on rangelands across the state.
“In Montana, the business of conserving wild places and river corridors is done by working with the private landowners, who are primarily agricultural producers surrounding the small community centers,” said Tess Scalon, project manager for TU in Granite County, Montana.
“Ranchers maintaining good profitability is critical to maintain wildlife and fish connectivity.”
According to Chris Edgington, a TU watershed project manager where six Montana rivers come together in the Jefferson Basin, restoration efforts often include removing antiquated infrastructure, like under-utilized dams or culverts, fine-tuning irrigation practices, and repairing riparian areas. He also says all of this work hinges on producers’ buy-in for voluntary conservation.
“Ranchers maintaining good profitability is critical to maintain wildlife and fish connectivity,” said Edgington. “We all benefit from open space and flowing rivers in this state. Clean, cold water is a finite resource and we need to protect it.”
In the Blackfoot Valley of Montana, the place where A River Runs Through It was based, data has shown that improving agricultural land management has direct synergy with benefitting native trout populations, according to Ryen Neudecker, TU restoration coordinator for the area. She said that water efficiency projects are huge, particularly in protecting instream flows amongst increasing environmental challenges like drought. On a project that revitalized over 15 miles of creek that flows through an agricultural corridor—one lonely trout has since become 500 trout per mile in about a decade’s time.
“In helping landowners make sure that their water rights are protected, and by making things more efficient—there’s more water in the stream for habitat and for fish,” Neudecker said. “And so to me it’s a total win-win.”
People and Place
The redemption of overzealous transformations to watersheds doesn’t happen overnight, but studies show that the farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange model is the most effective for spreading new ideals. Work by Seamus Land, lecturer in environmental studies at University of Montana, shows why collaborative concepts, language, and local practices are key for balancing development, agriculture, and watershed health.
For his study, Land walked the entirety of Grant Creek, a tributary of the same river that Oxbow Cattle Company flanks, but on the opposite side of Missoula. Before his walk, he spent months talking with landowners along the creek—a majority of which were producers—to understand their relationship with it.
“Connecting at landowners‘ level of appreciation for the landscape helped me see things from their perspective,” said Land. “This helped us to communicate more clearly about what connection means.”
By foot, it was clear that the creek’s upper reaches remained healthy. But as Grant Creek descended into the valley floor, manipulations made by industrial and agricultural use over the years showed wear on the watershed. In many places, streambanks were eroding, floodplains had become disconnected, riparian areas were heavily altered, and channels had deepened. From an ecological standpoint, large portions of the creek were deemed “unsustainable.”
“If that creek can run one to two weeks longer, the benefit for the community is enormous. I believe those little things we do matter.”
For longtime rancher Dale Frey, whose family has worked the lower reaches of Grant Creek since the 1930s, the creek’s deterioration became personal. Frey says in the ‘40s and ‘50s people could catch fish in Grant Creek throughout the year, and when he was in high school in the ‘60s, he believes he saw the last pair of spawning brook trout.
When he first imagined restoring his portion of Grant Creek, Frey knew that a lynchpin would be in transitioning the community perspective from seeing the waterway as an irrigation ditch, back to a creek again. He envisioned restoring the stretch of creek crossing his property into a habitat where trout could once again thrive. Frey’s willingness to work alongside conservation groups, scientists, and fellow producers was integral to helping tip the community scales, making for a restoration project that was rooted as much in trust as ecological science.
“I think anyone who has property, loves it, and will do what they can to help it,” Frey said.
Land said that skepticism toward Grant Creek’s restoration often stemmed from fears that the changes would disrupt longstanding practices, and that many residents viewed it as a resource to be used rather than an ecosystem to be cared for. But through face-to-face conversations with landowners, and his participatory scientific approach, Land helped open perspectives and build a community-driven restoration effort.
This materialized in the “Grant Creek Working Group,” which collaborated with the nonprofit Clark Fork Coalition that works to improve the health and vitality of the Clark Fork River. Over the course of about a year and a half, people upstream and downstream put their boots on the ground to bring the creek back to life. This work ultimately reframed the creek as a living system, rather than a collection of disconnected properties—a shared vision that continues to this day.
“One of the biggest wins of Grant Creek was getting the recognition that it was an entire watershed,” Land said. “People up and downstream worked together to achieve a common goal that the community placed value on.”
“I am going to leave my land to my kids, in the hopes they will continue to improve it.”
Other programs across the West are sweetening the deal for producers. The World Wildlife Fund’s Ranch Systems and Viability Planning (RSVP) network supports ranchers across the Northern Great Plains through technical assistance, education, and cost-share funding to repair landscapes and riparian areas on more than a million acres. Meanwhile, Audubon Society’s “bird-friendly beef” program offers market premiums for ranchers who protect bird habitat, already improving biodiversity and ecological stability on more than 3 million acres across the West. This acreage includes Oxbow Cattle Company.
For Frey, the goal extends beyond helping to re-establish a healthy fish habitat. He sees the work as an investment in the future and a way to ensure the next generation inherits a landscape in better condition than he found it.
“I am going to leave my land to my kids, in the hopes they will continue to improve it,” Frey said.
Agriculture has had a longstanding—and some might argue rigorous—influence over Western landscapes and culture, with Montana serving as a banner example. But it seems that producers‘ investment in their watersheds is sculpting a new playbook in sustaining the landscapes that feed us.
“One of the most valuable resources we have is water. The more we can do to protect it and steward it, the better for us as a species,” said Morris. “If that creek can run one to two weeks longer, the benefit for the community is enormous. I believe those little things we do matter.”
