As part of its commitment to environmental stewardship and conservation, PPL Montana this year will provide $1.2 million to support 40 fisheries, wildlife and habitat conservation projects within the Madison-Missouri River corridor.

“The program is part of PPL Montana’s objective to protect, mitigate, and enhance fisheries, wildlife and river habitat resources along a 550-mile-long corridor of the Madison and Missouri rivers from Yellowstone National Park to the headwaters of Fort Peck Reservoir,” said Jon Jourdonnais, PPL Montana’s manager of Hydro Licensing and Compliance.

“Started in 2000, this stewardship program has been extremely effective and is an excellent model of collaboration and success with state and federal resource agencies in meeting river conservation objectives,” he said.

“One of the real advantages is that PPL Montana provides private funds, which are essential for securing additional matching funds from state and federal grant programs,” Jourdonnais said. “This greatly multiplies the dollars available for fisheries, wildlife and river habitat restoration in this biologically rich and diverse watershed.”

This year’s PPL Montana funding leveraged an additional $1.7 million in outside matching funds and in-kind resources from state, federal and private sources for a total of $2.9 million for river resource stewardship in 2010.

The largest wildlife enhancement project approved for 2010 is the continued restoration of O’Dell Spring Creek and associated wetlands in the Madison River Valley near Ennis. Since 2004, PPL Montana has been working alongside landowners, government agencies, conservation groups and private industry to restore the O’Dell Creek wetlands. PPL Montana sponsored “Restoring the Treasure,” a 17-minute film that highlights the cooperative restoration effort that began in 2003. The film can be viewed here.

Other wildlife and habitat projects include wetland enhancements near Fort Benton, cost-share for protection of riverside lands through the Federal Conservation Reserve and Enhancement Program, streamside vegetation protection on lower O’Dell Creek, and riverine reptile and amphibian research and management.

Fisheries enhancement projects in the Missouri drainage include design and construction of barriers on small streams to protect native westslope cutthroat trout, restoration of a spring creek along the Sun River, riverbank restoration near Great Falls and Craig, and flow restoration in Hardy Creek.
 
Research projects include investigation of Missouri River trout movements and spawning below Holter Dam; survival of rainbow trout stocked in Holter Reservoir; biology of softshell turtles; and spawning movements of pallid sturgeon, paddlefish and sauger in the Missouri River downstream from Great Falls. 

Fisheries projects in the Madison River area include restoring habitat on Wigwam and Teepee creeks, restoring native westslope cutthroat trout and grayling in the upper Missouri drainage, and tracking rainbow trout spawning in the Madison River.

“The river corridor is immense, and a portion of our annual funding is dedicated to providing resources and equipment to monitor enhancement project effectiveness and make adjustments where necessary,” Jourdonnais said.

The stewardship program meets the requirements of PPL Montana’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license and its Memorandum of Understanding with state and federal agencies to monitor and offset resource impacts from the eight hydroelectric plants and one reservoir the company owns on the Madison and Missouri rivers. Projects are required to have an agency sponsor and must be consistent with current five-year fisheries and wildlife work plans approved by the FERC.

PPL Montana provides safe, reliable energy from coal-fired power plants at Colstrip and Billings, as well as 11 hydroelectric plants along West Rosebud Creek and the Missouri, Madison, Clark Fork and Flathead rivers. It has a combined generating capacity of more than 1,200 megawatts and has offices in Billings, Butte and Helena. PPL Montana and its 500 employees are dedicated to Montana and its communities, supporting educational, environmental and economic development programs across the state. PPL EnergyPlus operates a trading floor in Butte that markets and sells power for PPL Montana in wholesale and retail energy markets throughout the western United States. PPL Montana and PPL EnergyPlus are subsidiaries of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL).