INTRODUCTION 



The Blackfoot River watershed is 

 the site of a comprehensive watershed 

 restoration initiative, with emphasis on 

 native and wild trout recovery. The 

 program began in 1988 with the initiation 

 of studies that identified watershed-wide 

 degradation of tributaries as a primary 

 reason for fish population declines in the 

 Blackfoot River. From these early 

 findings, a restoration initiative began to 

 take form. The initiative started with 

 simple riparian improvement projects and 

 progressively evolved to a watershed-level 

 resource conservation program, largely 

 dedicated to improving wild trout 

 populations. Through the 1990s, we 

 directed priority for restoration to 37 

 streams with emphasis on Blackfoot River 

 tributaries from the North Fork down-river 

 (Figure 1). Restoration projects have been 

 completed on many streams, and final 

 restoration phases on many others are now 

 in progress. As a first step to expand 

 restoration beyond the current project 

 streams, we recently completed habitat 

 and fish population assessments on 54 

 additional streams with most of these 

 streams lying outside of the current 

 restoration focus area. From these and 

 earlier tributary assessments, we generated 

 this restoration prioritization report for all 

 88 Blackfoot tributaries (outside of the 

 Clearwater River drainage) inventoried 

 since 1989. 



Early fish population studies 

 documented low densities of native 

 westslope cutthroat trout (Onchorynchus 

 clarki lewisi) at the mid-to-low elevations 

 of the Blackfoot watershed (Peters and 

 Spoon 1989, Peters 1990, Pierce et al. 

 1997). Bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) 

 densities were low basin-wide, with 

 extirpated local populations in several 



•^^r^ . improvements 



^' Riparian livestock management 



Rsh ladders, fish screens, water 

 -<^{^ teases and other irrigation upgrades 



Channel reconstruction/habitat 







Fish Passage improvements 





Figure 1. Map of project streams and 

 principle restoration activities. 



