Like too many of Montana’s rivers, the Blackfoot River was ‘rode hard & put up wet’. But thanks to inspiring and effective leadership of Greg and Ryen Neudecker, the Blackfoot is recovering as it continues to run through the hearts of western Montana citizens.

Greg Neudecker, a Minnesota transplant, landed in the Blackfoot Valley in 1991 as a young wetland biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Partners for Wildlife Program. He worked on small wetland restoration projects, but soon partnered with MT Fish, Wildlife & Parks on a fledgling river restoration program. He also worked well with local folks, recognizing the community building value of shared evenings at Trixi’s Saloon.

Greg helped expand the scope and scale of the FWS Partners Program from wetland/waterfowl work to stream restoration then to watershed-scale conservation – in part by changing the program name to Partners for Fish & Wildlife. With guidance from Land Lindberg, Hank Goetz, Jim Stone and others, Greg recognized the potential of the Blackfoot Challenge and assumed a leadership role (vice chair) in the mid-1990s. With the Challenge, Trout Unlimited, and the Partners Program, Greg led efforts to engage landowners in “ridge-top to ridge-top” conservation. Based on the success of the Blackfoot efforts, Greg expanded the ‘focus area’ concept statewide, resulting in major conservation efforts in the Big Hole, Rocky Mountain Front, Glaciated Plains & Centennial Valley. He shared that vision of landscape-scale conservation projects across the nation, resulting in projects in Nebraska, New Mexico, California, Kansas and South Dakota.

Greg helped raise millions of dollars for stream restoration and used Land and Water Conservation Funding for conservation easements in the Blackfoot Watershed and across Montana. He also supported conservation professional education efforts at the local, state & national levels. Greg now directs the Montana Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program where he continues to practice and promote private lands conservation, continuing to support bull trout, grizzly bear & trumpeter swan recovery efforts started in his early career.

Ryen Neudecker came to the Blackfoot Valley in 2001 right out of graduate school (go Bobcats!). She worked four years with Montana FWP’s Fisheries Division, helping with Milltown dam fish passage studies, whirling disease research and stream restoration in the Blackfoot Basin. In 2005, the Big Blackfoot Chapter of Trout Unlimited hired her as a project manager, and for 15 years, she helped raise millions of dollars for aquatic habitat restoration, while managing consultants and contractors, collecting field data and navigating a complex social environment. She worked on water leases, riparian grazing, channel reconstruction, road decommissioning, fish passage barrier removal, and fish-friendly irrigation methods. Ryen works with Federal, State and Local governments, non-profit organizations, foundations and private landowners. Like Greg, she contributed to hundreds of watershed-scale restoration/conservation projects and is considered among the most effective stream restoration practitioners in western Montana.

With a combined 50 years of restoration/conservation work, Greg and Ryen have together helped restore 75 tributaries, enrolled over 600 square miles of private land in voluntary conservation easements, including hundreds of wetlands and over 1000 miles of riparian habitat. The river and the surrounding landscape are now (and will continue to be) ecologically intact due in part to the long-term contributions and leadership skills of both Greg and Ryen.

By Ron Pierce, Don Peters, Paul Roos, Becky Garland, edited by Vicki Watson