River Study Offers New Angle on Yellowstone Recreation

In 2016, mountain whitefish in Montana’s Yellowstone River were turning up dead. Dozens were documented bobbing down the blue-ribbon fishery and washing up on shorelines from Gardiner to Springdale. Something was wrong.

In response, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks closed 183 miles of the Yellowstone and all its tributaries to recreational activities, crippling the local economy and sending the community into action.

“The river closure sent a shock wave in a number of different directions,” Whitney Tilt, project manager for Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group, told Mountain Journal in a phone interview. “And there was some concern about any role recreation could have played.”

On any given summer Saturday, more than 800 people enjoy the Yellowstone River between Yellowstone National Park and Livingston, Montana, and management agencies do not have baseline data to help inform policy. Now, one pandemic, a 1,000-year flood and an historic development boom later, the Upper Yellowstone River Recreational Use Study hopes to plug that gap.

“The primary question, from the standpoint of recreational use, is how well do the individual river access sites meet the public and commercial needs at times of high demand,” Tilt wrote in the report. “River access sites are the primary pinch point for public access to the water.”

Survey respondents in the study gave the on-river experience overwhelmingly high marks to the tune of almost 99 percent satisfaction, however they were less impressed with the put-ins and take-outs along the waterway. Just 56 percent of surveyed users were very satisfied with the put-ins in 2023, down from 92 percent in 2020, and only 36 percent were very satisfied with the take-outs, compared to 90 percent in 2020. Still, taken together, 97 percent of people are satisfied with the access-site experience, an overwhelmingly positive response.

While much of the report supports what longtime river users already assumed, perhaps most surprising for this world-famous trout water is the relatively low number of anglers. On July 4 weekend in 2021, fisher-folk made up just 14 percent of the total observed users, with the vast majority taking to the river on personal crafts such as float tubes or individual kayaks, the so-called “splash-and-giggle” crowd.

According to Tilt, these are the kind of results that justify the study. With these hard numbers, recreation managers and stakeholders can more effectively work to improve the experience for all users. “The outcome we’re aiming for is that we have a resource that is heavily used, without that translating into abused,” Tilt said.

The report concludes with a set of recommendations for improved river access, better etiquette education, improved road safety measures, better resource management and ongoing monitoring, but it does not include the impact all this recreation might be having on ecosystem health. “From a fishery standpoint, there are reasons for concern,” Tilt added. “We do think the fishery is not as robust as it used to be.”

Once again, FWP has remarkably little information on the health of the fishery, but that could soon change too. With funding from the agency, researchers at Montana State University are conducting creel studies on several iconic Montana trout streams, and in 2025 that research will include the Yellowstone.

As recreating on Montana’s rivers continues to increase in popularity, legislators at the state level are also taking notice. On March 18, House Bill 762, the so-called “river census” bill, passed 67-32. Bozeman Democrat Rep. Joshua Seckinger, himself a fishing guide, introduced the bill that would require FWP to collect data on 966 miles of 16 different waterways, including the Yellowstone below the study area in the Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group report.

With HB 762, Seckinger hopes to bring more clarity to who is using Montana’s rivers and when, allowing managers to implement data-driven policies that better reflect the on-water realities.

“In recent sessions we’ve seen various proposals aimed at regulating river traffic, often based on anecdotal observations rather than comprehensive data,” Seckinger said on the House floor on March 18. “This bill seeks to establish a clear baseline of use.”

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