The Ross Fork Creek

Central Montana Resource Council (CMRC) is a community organization of concerned citizens who are dedicated to the sustainability of water, land, and food productions for future generations. Based in Fergus, Judith Basin, and Wheatland counties, CMRC focuses on protecting family ranches, building a vibrant localized food system, increasing accessibility of clean energy, and protecting water resources.  

The Ross Fork Creek is a tributary of Judith River in central Montana. Ross Fork Creek consists of 64.23 river miles running from its headwaters in the Big Snowy Mountains through Fergus and Judith Basin Counties. This area supports a variety of land use and management practices, including traditional ranching and farming operations, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (“CAFOs”), recreation, and fish and wildlife habitat. Ross Fork Creek is currently listed as a Category 5 impaired stream by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in its 2020 Integrated Report, for alterations in streamside/littoral vegetative covers, excessive nitrate-nitrite concentrations, physical substrate habitat alterations, and sedimentation. Under the Category 5 listing, DEQ has determined that one or more of the beneficial uses, including recreation, agricultural, drinking water, and aquatic life, of Ross Fork Creek are impaired or threatened, and the Total Maximum Daily Load program is required to address the impairment of threat. Despite these threats, there is a lack of comprehensive data on the condition of the Ross Fork.

CMRC’s Ross Fork Creek project seeks to obtain scientifically sound water quality and quantity data, through local volunteers and agency partnerships, to assess the overall condition of the stream and establish a baseline for future comparisons. In the second year of this project, CMRC will continue with an assessment of nutrient concentrations, stream discharge, dissolved oxygen, and temperature. In future years, CMRC hopes to expand the project to include a broader suite of analytes including cation concentrations and total dissolved solids (“TDS”). They will involve landowners, local students, and other community members in our monitoring activities to increase community awareness and education. The group will also initiate collaborative watershed planning among local groups invested in the use, restoration, and conservation of the waters in central Montana.

For the second year of CMRC’s Ross Fork Creek project, volunteers collected water quality and quantity data from five sites along Ross Fork Creek in Judith Basin County, Montana. The sites, depicted on the map below, are representative of the variety of land uses along the stream and include the following: (a) recently restored beaver habitat on upper Ross Fork Creek; (b) Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation State Trust Land upstream of a CAFO; (c) private ranchland downstream of a CAFO; and (d) public land utilized as a Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks (“FWP”) access site, which also represents the closest site to the Judith River confluence.

To learn more about Central Montana Resource Council or Monitoring Montana Waters, click the caption below each organization's logo.