Macroinvertebrate Sampling to Follow Water Quality Monitoring Efforts
This week, Save Wild Trout’s Program Director Brian Wheeler is logging more than 500 miles across the Jefferson Basin, maintaining continuous water-quality monitoring devices on the Ruby, Beaverhead, Boulder, Jefferson, and Big Hole Rivers. At 25 sites, Wheeler is cleaning algae from sensors, documenting dissolved oxygen, pH, and other water-quality metrics, and ensuring equipment is ready to keep recording conditions every 15 minutes for the coming weeks.
“These loggers are relatively new technology for the basin, and they give us a window into the health of these rivers that simply hasn’t existed before,” said Brian Wheeler, Program Director of Save Wild Trout. “We’re here because we have to be. This project is about the critical role science plays to make sure we know what we have and what we need to do to protect it. And from what we saw in our last report, we know our fisheries and the aquatic ecosystems supporting them are struggling.”
The monitoring effort builds on Save Wild Trout’s 2023–2024 Jefferson Basin Abiotic Report, released in July, which provided the most comprehensive overview of water-quality trends in the watershed to date. Now, as the season shifts from summer to fall, Save Wild Trout will continue to analyze river health, transitioning to multiple weeks of macroinvertebrate sampling once the loggers are pulled for the season.
Field conditions emphasize the urgency of the work. Low flows have persisted basin-wide, and fishing closures remained in place through much of the summer. “July was the new August this year,” Wheeler observed. “With the heat, the algae cycle begins earlier and can persist longer. Now that temperatures have cooled and we’ve had some rain, plus smoke and cloud cover, we’ll see how these factors affect river health in the coming weeks.”
This season’s work continues a science program originally designed to support pristine water designations in the basin. Instead, results revealed elevated nutrient levels and other stressors to river health, like low dissolved oxygen, indicating the need for stronger protections and scaled-up restorative actions.
“Save Wild Trout is collecting the science because you can’t protect what you don’t measure,” Wheeler said. “We encourage everyone to report river observations by reaching out to us at info@savewildtrout.org, or directly to FWP, and if they’re able, consider a donation to support these privately driven efforts, which depend entirely on public contributions.”