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Experts at Missoula forum: legacy mining, warming streams and rising recreation pressure threaten Clark Fork Basin
Summary
A multi‑agency panel in Missoula outlined how a century of mining plus shifting climate and rising recreation pressure have combined to stress fisheries, complicate cleanup and require new storage and restoration strategies across the Clark Fork River Basin.
Missoula — Scientists, tribal representatives and state agency leaders told a crowded public forum that the Clark Fork River Basin faces overlapping challenges from legacy mining contamination, changing precipitation and runoff timing, warming stream temperatures and increased recreational use.
At a Clark Fork Coalition event, moderator Brian opened by describing the basin’s scale — “14,000,000 acres, which is 22,000 square miles” — and its history of timber removal and large‑scale mining that, together with a 1908 flood that moved thousands of cubic feet per second of contaminated sediment, left persistent metals on the floodplain. "We are about 110 years into the cleanup of the Upper Clark Fork," Sam Carlson of the Clark Fork Coalition said, noting the long horizon for…
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