Group says North Fork of the Flathead endangered

On a bright blue day at Blankenship black bugs come off the water and land on your head and arms and hat. They would be annoying if they weren’t such a good omen, because these black bugs are no ordinary bugs.

They’re stoneflies and they make their living in the tiny cracks between the rocks of the North Fork of the Flathead River. They’re annoying to us, maybe. But to trout they’re like candy. To trout they’re food staple.

Stoneflies in a river mean it’s clean and pure and unpolluted. Because streams that are polluted have sediments and filth that fill those cracks between the rocks that ultimately choke out the stoneflies entirely.

Put a coal mine along a stream and that’s what gets squeezed out first — the stoneflies from sediment washing into the river. And then the less tolerant mayflies disappear.  And sometimes sediment and pollutants get so bad the caddis flies disappear as well. And as the bugs go, so go the trout.

That’s what’s happened up Michel Creek, a tributary to the Elk River in British Columbia. In stretches where Michel drains along the open cuts of Coal Mountain the stream is barren, notes Ric Hauer, a scientist with the Flathead Lake Biological Station.

The fear is that a similar mine will be cut into the mountains in the headwaters of the North Fork at Foisey Creek. The Cline Mining Co. has plans in the works for a mine in the headwaters. Also, the fear is that energy giant British Petroleum will begin sinking into coal bed methane wells in the North Fork as well. In addition, gold miners are digging wells, and phosphate mines have also been discussed. British Petroleum and the province have agreed to not do exploration in the Flathead at this point, but they are going forward in the Elk River. The fear is that if they get a foothold in the Elk, they’ll soon be in Flathead, promises or not.

As a result, American Rivers placed the North Fork on its “Most Endangered” list this week. American Rivers is a nationwide river conservation group and the latest to get involved with efforts to conserve and protect it.

“Harmful mining north of the border would destroy the clean water, world-class recreation and wildlife of the Wild and Scenic North Fork Flathead,” said Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers. “We simply can’t afford losing one of the last truly wild places in the lower 48.”

On Tuesday, conservationists gathered at Blankenship to talk about the river, which makes up the entire western boundary of Glacier National Park.

Casey Brennan is a Canadian with the group Wildsight in British Columbia. B.C. will have elections in May which could help the river, he said. The Liberal candidate, Bill Bennett, has claimed he’ll seek protection for the watershed to some degree, but Bennett has butted heads with Americans in the past, including a shout-down with Sen. Max Baucus when Baucus visited there to protest mining plans a few years ago.

His opponent Troy Sebastian, of the New Democratic Party, has supported a feasibility study to increase the size of Waterton Lakes National Park.

Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association said the timing is right for some sort of permanent protection for the North Fork. B.C. will host the 2010 Winter Olympics and Glacier will turn 100 that same year.

“The idea is to get B.C. and the U.S. together to protect the world’s first peace park,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Erin Sexton is also a scientist with the biological station and has been gathering baseline data since 2005 on the watershed. Right now, the river is all but pristine, the data shows.

The purpose of the data is to come up with a plan for appropriate land use in the region. And so far, it’s not saying that mining of any sort would be appropriate, Sexton noted.

The North Fork is truly one of the last great places on Earth, all agreed.

The challenge is getting the governments to do something about it.