- [Presenter] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheaton Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardener's Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music) - Good evening.

You're watching "Montana Ag Live" originating today from the studios at KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

Nice snowy evening.

We should have a lot of people out there viewing.

I hope so because tonight we really have a very interesting program that centers on what conservation and agriculture can provide for one another.

So with that, let me introduce tonight's panel.

It's going to be talking a lot about riparian habitat and fish restoration.

So far left is Katelin Killoy-Zenga.

How'd I do?

I didn't butcher that too bad tonight.

- No.

(chuckles) - She's actually a riparian habitat specialist with Montana Fish and Wildlife.

She's based in Dillon and she works a lot on the grayling reintroduction or the establishment of a native population of grayling in that area.

We'll get to that as we move along tonight.

Our special guest tonight, Jake Peterson.

Jake is a rancher from the Big Hole area.

We had to twist his arm to come down to the snowy night, but he's here.

If you have questions about what ranching is all about in the Big Hole, it's a good time to call a question in.

And he is part of the grayling establishment project that's ongoing with Montana Fish and Wildlife.

And Tim Seipel, Tim likes to be called a weed ecologist.

I will not give into that.

He's a weed scientist.

And of course, Mac Burgess.

Mac is a small farms horticulturalist.

And actually, if you have horticulture questions tonight, good chance to call him in.

And he brought half his yard in for ornamentation tonight, so don't pay attention to that.

You need an ax to get into most of those squash.

I can testify to that.

Answering the phone tonight, Carl Whitmore and Sherry Klas.

So if you have questions, don't be bashful.

The phone number will be on the screen.

If you have curiosity questions, phone them in and comments for that matter, because we have an expert panel here and they will answer your questions.

I'm going to start off with Jake.

Tell us a little bit about your operation down in the Big Hole.

- We live near Wisdom.

My family settled in the Big Hole in about 1890, so I'm a fifth generation rancher.

Currently, I'm there with my dad, my wife, and two daughters, and another kid that works for us.

And in the last five years, my father-in-law has joined our operation as well.

- [Jack] Yeah, that's a beautiful area to stay.

It's a little higher than we are here.

Did you get a lot of snow down there this week?

- You know, not as much as you guys did here, We had about an inch when we left, but it got a little heavier the further east we got.

- [Jack] Well, we appreciate you driving up.

Katelin, tell us a little bit about how you two are involved and about a project called the CCAA Project.

It's all yours.

- Awesome.

Yeah.

So Jake is enrolled in my program.

It's called the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, for short, CCAA.

This is a voluntary non-federal land program where landowners can choose to enroll and we work on threats on their property for Arctic grayling habitat.

The Big Hole Arctic grayling population is the last entirely fluvial native population in the contiguous lower 48.

And when they enroll in the program, they get a site specific plan where we work on four conservation measures, riparian habitat, instream flow, fish passage and entrainment.

Entrainment is when fish get lost in irrigation ditches.

- Okay.

So CCA, explain that a little more.

And Jake, you can jump in.

Tell us how you became involved with this project.

- Well, I would say my dad was probably got us involved because I was still, I think it was 20 years ago, so I was just finishing up college or going to college, I will say.

And so he kind of got us enrolled.

So I wasn't there on the forefront, but as I came home and started working with him, I got more involved.

- [Jack] Okay, so the program, as I understand it, and if we could bring up a picture of the grayling, which is the fish that this project is focused around, explain what this program actually does relative to ensure that the grayling will continue to flourish in the Big Hole region.

- [Katelin] Yeah, so like I said, so a landowner will roll into the program.

And when we do, we'll do a baseline assessment of their property looking at those four conservation measures.

And then we'll do actions with the private landowner and we'll work together to come up with solutions that work for both of us to address them.

So for say riparian habitat, we would do things as riparian fencing, stock water.

For fish passage, we would do say fish ladders or new irrigation infrastructure.

For instream flow, we would do new irrigation infrastructure and provide measuring devices.

Yeah, and the assurance as part of the name means that when a landowner chooses to sign up into the program and we get a site specific plan, they are not required to do any further actions than what is in their site specific plan if Arctic grayling are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

- And we'll get in that a little bit more, but I've got a couple questions here, quick ones I want to get into.

For Tim, this person wants to know, can they spray 24D on top of the snow and expect it to translocate and control the dandelions when the snow melts?

- No, they should not do that.

You cannot apply a pesticide onto snow that is not... It would likely just run off when it melts.

Who knows where it goes?

It travels over the surface a little bit.

Wait until the end of next week when it's going to be 67 degrees in the Gallatin Valley again, and then you can probably spray your dandelions.

And they'll still be green.

I don't think they'll go dormant in this cold snap.

- There's enough snow that they'll be protected very well.

- Yeah, exactly.

I think having that snow has that, it'll keep it right up freezing out the surface.

So it's actually- - Yeah, we were talking ahead of time.

I asked Jay what if they had problems with Canada thistle in the riparian areas that they're trying to preserve and the answer was yes.

What would be the time of year that you would want to spray those thistles in a riparian area?

- This is actually a really good time of year.

So Canada thistle's actually a pretty good pollinator plant.

If you've ever walked out into the middle of a patch of Canada thistle in June or July, it's just summoned with pollinators.

But the thing about Canada thistle is it takes all its starches and sugars and it sends them up to make flowers in that June, July time of year.

And you really don't get very good control if you go out and spot spray them that time of year.

I actually just put a new video up on the MSU extension YouTube page about spot spraying Canada thistle.

And what we did basically was we cut it off in July, so we prevented it from going to flower and making seed, and then we just came back literally with the backpack sprayer on walking around spraying the rosettes of the Canada Thistle on the surface 'cause the producer wanted to keep his alfalfa vetch tray foil mix in there.

And so there wasn't many choices so we just spot spray them.

And it's actually, I kind of call it crank in the ratchet, work in one section at a time and you can actually really reduce the thistle quite a bit.

- Jake, has the Canada thistle moved into some of your hay fields or is it just primarily riparian areas?

- Not necessarily in our hay fields.

I think we, from observation, I don't really know, but I don't feel like it... Our hay fields are very well irrigated and I don't feel like it thrives in there.

I don't know if other grasses choke it out or what, but it's mostly on the dry ground.

- Okay.

Thank you.

A question, I got to you in a minute here.

I've got something about cucumbers being bitter, but you have to formulate an answer to that in a minute.

But an email question came in from Missoula and they say they love ranching guests and thank you for doing this program.

So somebody appreciates you coming in.

Their question is, what convinced your operation to adopt the program that you're involved with?

- I think one of the major things was is the grayling were borderline going to get listed.

And if that happens, we may lose control of our water or things like that.

So that was a biggie.

We want to help out there.

And it has helped us with the stock tanks and the fencing, everything like that.

And the diversion in the creek, it's just really helped our bottom line, I would say, 'cause they're very expensive projects and it just agriculture struggles sometimes and it just really helps us continue our operation.

- What do the stock tanks do?

So that means that gives you the ability to push cows further away from where they'd have a water source if you add a water source somewhere else.

- It helps utilize our pastures better.

I think two years ago we did one out in our state section actually, and we had one source of water in the closed corner.

So we put a solar well in the far corner and now they will utilize that grass, that pasture better.

- I think we have a picture of stock tanks, if we could have the control room bring that up, because a lot of people that are not involved with agriculture might not know how a stock tank works.

What keeps us from freezing?

Anything?

- Well, most of ours are continuous flow.

So in the Big Hole, winter can be tough, so we continuous flow most all of our stock tanks.

Our solar tanks, we're only utilizing them in the summer, so it's not that big of a deal, but continuous flow is what prevents those from freezing.

- That works.

Okay, thank you.

Back to you.

Why are cucumbers bitter?

I want to hear this.

- So there's a chemical reason.

There's a chemical called cucurbitacin and that rhymes with the family therein, so that's a pretty easy one to remember.

But the reason that cucumbers can accumulate that in the fruits are, it's actually fairly complicated and as usual, there's an interaction.

So it might be that you chose the wrong genetic variety.

Some varieties are more pronent than others.

But generally, stress in the plant.

So if the plant is stressed for water, stressed for fertility, stressed by insect pests, stressed by wild temperature swings, cold and hot or hot and then cold and welcome to Montana, right?

- [Jack] Don't grow cucumbers in other words.

- Well, try a few different varieties and a lot of the modern hybrid, seedless, parthenocarpic, thin skin ones actually can do quite well here if you can cover them up at night especially.

- Mine this year actually were delicious.

That's the first time in a long time.

Normally about half of them are inedible because they really are bitter.

And I take good care of them, so I don't know if you're right or not.

- The other thing is letting them get too big.

Harvesting them in a timely fashion when they're small can help too.

- Okay.

Sounds good.

- But try some of the hybrid ones.

Some of the modern hybrids can be... - That's a lot of work to find them.

No, good answer.

Katelin, this person has heard about this project, excuse me, in the past.

They're curious.

Have the grayling numbers in the Big Hole drainage increased since this program started?

- Yeah, they have.

So we use a genetic-based monitoring program called effective number of breeders.

We use this because grayling are highly migratory and widely dispersed throughout the system.

So we don't have a, say, a number per mile, but what we've seen since the program has began is our annual estimates are averaging on average, double what they were, and in some years they're even higher.

So the program is working.

What we know is the actual number of adults compared to effective number of breeders is about four to five times higher.

So in 2025, we had 171.8 effective number of breeders.

And so that equates to over 670 adults.

And that metric is approximately the number of spawning adults that contribute to a given cohort.

But the long short of it is yes, we've seen numbers increase.

- You know, that wouldn't be possible if you did not have 30 or so ranchers in the Big Hole drainage that were involved with Montana Fish and Wildlife to preserve the spawning habitat.

Has the riparian habitat improved along with this program?

- Yeah, we've seen improvements in all four conservation measures.

And specifically for riparian habitat, we've seen riparian habitat that was at risk or non-sustainable become sustainable or really high at risk.

We've seen large improvements in riparian habitat over time.

And if you think about when this program began, which was 20 years ago, that's actually relatively a short period of time for riparian habitat to improve this much.

- [Jack] So that's what it looked like before the improvement.

If we could have a photo, you brought one of the Wisdom Bridge, I think.

- Yep.

On the Big Hole River.

- On the Big Hole River.

- [Jack] The second photograph shows the improvement in riparian habitat.

It's amazing.

And that's over a 10-year period of time?

- 20 years, yep.

- 20 years.

Okay.

Big difference, definitely.

Have you seen that on your operation?

- I have seen.

Yeah, it's improved a lot over the last 20 years.

We've fenced a fair amount of our creeks, big lake creek and rock creek, and we only use them a few certain times a year at less vulnerable stages for things.

And yeah, it looks way better.

- Now, does that restoration involve going in and planting things too, or is it just fence the cattle?

- Did a little planting, but most of it was fencing it off and just letting it kind of rejuvenate itself, I would say.

- Yeah.

Most of the work we do is more passive.

So that riparian fencing, so we can control grazing times and same with stock water to help control grazing times and pull cattle away from the riparian area has huge effects.

- What does it look like?

Are we adding more willows to the mix?

Does the river become more sinuous and have some more turns in it and deep holes?

Or how does that riparian area change to improve the habitat?

- Yeah, so we get willow establishment that starts to regenerate naturally.

A lot of times once we start getting a point bar forming, there's plenty of willows in the upper Big Hole, they'll start to establish.

The channel will become more sinuous.

They'll narrow up and we'll start to get that pool riffle habitat.

What we saw in the beginning of the program in some of our degraded habitat, the channel had eroded out really wide and become shallow, and so it started to fill up with sediment and you lost that pool habitat.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Typical question that comes from Bozeman.

I'll throw this at Katelin.

What's the best fly to use on the Big Hole to catch a grayling?

- Yeah, so grayling are opportunistic feeders, so really you can't go wrong, but a midsize nymph or dry fly such as a hare's ear or parachute atoms are safe bets.

- Okay.

Can I ask a naive question?

What are grayling?

Are they related to white mountain white fish?

Are they trout?

What are- - They're salmonoid, aren't they?

- Yeah.

So trout, salmon, and grayling, yeah, they're all part of salmonidae, so they're in that salmon family.

- Answer this.

Don't cringe like that.

I haven't thrown a good curve ball yes.

I was down in West Yellowstone this week, midweek, beautiful area right down there.

And there's a stream down there just before you get to West Yellowstone called Grayling Creek.

How can it be called Grayling Creek when there's no grayling in it?

- Yeah, so there was historically grayling in Grayling Creek.

So in the upper Missouri River watershed, the grayling used to be much more widespread.

Currently, there is a project to help get grayling back into Grayling Creek.

- Okay.

A question from Hilger.

You guys know where Hilger is?

- Oh yeah.

- Okay.

- This caller wants to know, he's curious, by enrolling in this program, did it reduce the carrying capacity cow-wise, cow-calf-wise of your operation?

- It actually increased our carrying capacity.

With the fact of the fencing we put in, we could utilize our grass better, make them eat some less desirable grasses at certain times of the year.

You know, a cow might stay on one end of the pasture where they really like the feed, but they'll peel it down, look like a golf course, and they'll leave the other side because they don't care for it as much.

Now we can move our cattle around.

We don't intensive graze, but we can utilize our feed better.

- That makes good sense.

No doubt about it.

And that's probably, how many people are involved with the CCAA program in the state with the grayling?

- Yeah, so we have 31 ranchers enrolled in the upper Big Hole CCAA, and we have an additional seven in a Centennial Valley Arctic Grayling CCAA program.

And so we have, in the core habitat in the upper Big Hole, we have 86% of the core habitat enrolled.

- That's pretty impressive.

And I read in a publication here that includes about 250 stream miles and just short of a couple hundred thousand acres.

- [Katelin] Yeah, we have about 160,000 acres enrolled.

- That's impressive.

Yeah.

- And pretty successful program.

There's no doubt about it.

I like this one for Jake.

From Hamilton, the caller wants to know if you have trouble with grizzly bears in your operation.

- Not yet.

Not yet.

There have been some in the valley, but we have not had any issues yet.

- You're strictly cattle, correct?

- We're strictly cattle.

Yes, sir, cow-calf operation.

- Has the grizzly bears moved in to the Big Hole region?

- Yes, there are some grizzly bears definitely on the west side of the valley, and I've heard reports of some on the east side of the valley.

- How about big canines?

- Yep.

There are plenty of those.

They really wreaked havoc for a while and things seem to be kind of tamed down at the moment, but yep.

- You know, last week we had guard dogs on for sheep primarily.

Do you know if anybody's using guard dogs for cattle?

- Yes.

Yeah, there are a fair amount of operations in the valley that use them.

We used to winter some calves for our neighbors and they'd stay right there at our house.

Those guard dogs would, and they'd make their circle every night, and I think they do a heck of a job in helping protect our cattle.

- I was impressed with the dog we had here last week.

Beautiful animal.

You would never believe it was a guard dog as friendly as it was, but they are impressive animals.

I'll throw this one to Katelin.

From Bozeman area, the caller would like to know if beaver dams are beneficial for grayling and what are their critical water temperature requirements.

I would say beaver dams are probably a negative because you can't get the spawning areas.

Am I correct?

- Yeah.

So it's a little bit of both.

So right now, a lot of people have started to realize how beneficial beaver dams and beaver activity can be for ecosystems.

And for arctic grayling specifically, they do cause a big fish barrier.

And so when they want to get into spawning, rearing or adult habitat, sometimes they can't get into there.

So we do in the spring notch beaver dams so that arctic grayling can get up into where they need to be spawn and swim back down.

And what we found is grayling rearing in these ponds grow really well and they're protected from predators.

And so I'd like to say we like them when we need them and they're not as helpful when they need to get up and down, but the beautiful part is if you can work properly with your system, all species can coexist.

And so yeah, they do cause some havoc, but we're on it.

- [Jack] Okay.

So up on the screen, we have a stream going down and then a structure off to the right.

Jake, you want to explain what that is on the screen up there or what the purpose of that, I would say instrument, but that's not a good term.

- [Jake] You're looking at the main channel of the creek right there and the rocks are acting as a diversion to back the water up.

And then on the right side of that picture is a head gate and that's how we'll open the head gate up and allow the water to go down our ditch.

- [Jack] So what's to stop fish from heading down the ditch which is going to dry up?

- Yeah.

And that's again, that's entrainment.

So this is a risk we thought was going to be a really big deal when we first started this program.

And through tons of surveys we've done over the years, it hasn't been as strong of a threat as we realized, but we do see it primarily around that spawning area.

And so there's a few things we've done to address known entrainment sources.

You can install a fish screen, which essentially blocks the fish from entering the ditch, or you can also do bypass channels so they can enter the ditch and flow right back into the main stream channel.

- Okay.

That sounds good.

I got a couple more questions for you in a little bit, but before that, we have a bunch of squash on here and the question comes in, when should they start eating squash that you have on the table?

Somebody obviously is fascinated by them.

I'm not particularly 'cause I know how hard they are to open and cook.

- Oh, well, once you get them open, they can be real good.

- But my ax is not sharp enough to get them open.

- Actually, some of these thinner skin ones, to back up, these are all winter squash.

They were all grown in Bozeman, all except that yellow one on our student farm here on MSU campus.

They were all started from seed middle of May.

They were all transplanted around the 1st of June.

We did have a light frost about June 8th, and they survived that somehow.

And then we harvested them all a couple weeks ago.

And I wouldn't eat one yet.

I wouldn't eat any of 'em yet.

I'd let them store for a little while.

So they're actively becoming more orange in color and the starches inside of all of them are turning into sugars.

But if you do want to eat one sooner, I would eat one of the smaller pepo, cucurbita pepo type ones with the thin stem.

So this is a delicata squash.

It would probably be okay to eat now, but I would eat it in three, four weeks from now.

It's going to be better.

And likewise, these acorn squash are the ones you want to eat first.

That's kind of your classic green acorn, and this is a cool old heirloom acorn squash, really sweet, good eating squash for Thanksgiving time.

These bigger ones, I would wait.

Wait until December or January on 'em.

And that's the one you're going to need to have a large tool.

- That's a Hubbard squash.

Yeah.

And I grew those one year, not here, but someplace else, and of course you can't eat at all.

My golden retrievers love steamed squash and yellow vegetables are good for dogs.

So there is a use for them other than human food.

Yeah.

- Fair enough.

- Okay.

- You could freeze it too.

- All right.

From Helena, for Katelin, what environmental changes have occurred that caused the grayling to become endangered?

It's a good question.

- Yeah, there was a lot of different historical causes that cause our Arctic grayling population to shrink, but the biggest threats were habitat.

So irrigation practices such as overgrazing, entrainment, blocked fish passage, so a lot of those irrigation infrastructures used to block fish passage, so they could not access their spawning grounds or refuge.

And a lot of it comes back to riparian habitat that was poor, and so they weren't getting that pool habitat or gravels they needed.

- I would also add to that just from observation.

I don't know much about as she does, but predators are pretty hard on the fish right now in the Big Hole.

We got a lot of otters and some birds that are kind of pecking away at it a little bit.

Our streams are, I would say our streams are not as full of fish as they used to be, yeah.

- So is that more with, I assume the birds would be pelicans and things like that.

Is that more of a seasonal thing, as the water flow is reduced, the otters and pelicans could look for them?

- The otters are there all winter.

I know that.

We see them in the winter.

But as for the birds, it's more seasonal, I would say.

- So this is my stupidity asking.

Would they prefer to feed on grayling or prefer to feed on trout?

- I don't know.

- I don't know.

- Which one's faster and could get away from an otter?

- Well, I could say Arctic grayling are more aggressive when they eat, but despite some higher predator numbers that we've had in the recent years, we still see the higher number of graylings.

So habitat is the strongest lead on what our numbers are going to be.

- Okay.

From Butte, good question for Jake.

How would you convince your neighbors who are not involved with this program to become involved?

- I would just say, like I say earlier, the bottom line, that the financial assistance that they help with with all our projects have really just helped our operation.

Like say, it's increased our capacity.

We would have gotten to those projects eventually, but I know the last ones, the last four sets of tanks we put in included four wells and four sets of tanks, and that's a pretty big check to write so.

- Is there a cost sharing with Fish Wildlife on this or with a federal program?

Is there cost sharing involved?

- Yeah, so we have multiple partners involved in this program as well, so DNRC, US Fish Wildlife Service, and NRCS.

We raise funding between the agencies to try and cover all these projects.

So we don't want the cost to be on the landowner because there's a lot of things we're hoping to gain in the site specific plans, and we know that's a financial commitment people can't do.

So yeah, primarily FWP, US Fish Wildlife Service, and NRCS raise funds.

- Is this part of the EQIP?

NRCS does the EQIP program, right?

Is that tied into this as well?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll work with them on EQIP, getting landowners signed up if they're interested.

- And EQIP's a program that helps producers get infrastructure jobs done on their properties that benefit sustainability or better use of water, things like that?

- Environmental quality incentive... - Program.

- Program.

I think we got it.

Yeah.

- There we go.

Yeah.

- So I have a question here for me.

Would you ask Jack to explain where the Centennial Valley is?

And the answer is no, 'cause I don't want anybody else to find it.

- It's between the Red Rock Pass and the Monida Pass.

- That works.

- There you go.

- You can look it up.

It's a beautiful place.

I'll say that.

I was actually down there this past week.

There was nobody around.

It was peaceful.

A lot of moose, a lot of elk, a stunning place.

- It almost got made into a bombing range in the Second World War, actually.

- I did not know that.

That would've been a disaster.

- The Trumpeter Swan was there all.

- Okay.

So enough about the Centennial Valley.

For Katelin, what environmental changes have occurred that caused the... We asked her that one already.

Caller was reading about graylings in Montana outdoors.

I saw the article.

And the article mentioned that some beaver dams are better for increased flows.

How do you decide which dams to breach and which ones not to?

Both of you guys can jump in on that.

- Yeah, so if we're talking about beaver dam notching, we only notch the ones that are in the first few miles of a spawning tributary and we'll notch any ones that are too tall that they could and pass.

And with working with our enrollees, if there's one that's, you know, messing with a irrigation infrastructure, we try to work with them to resolve that issue as well.

- [Jack] Okay.

- How far up or how small of a stream are grayling getting into?

- Yeah, so they surprisingly use a pretty low gradient compared to when we're picturing cutthroat trout, they're way up there in the headwaters.

Grayling really use the very lowest maybe mile of a tributary.

And so near Wisdom, right below, is our big spawning area.

And so streams like Steel Creek, Swamp Creek, they're really using the first mile where it's really low gradient, low kind of wide.

- Okay.

Question from Twin Bridges for both Jake and Katelin.

The organization Trout Unlimited, have they worked with you as a rancher or with Fish, Wildlife and Park in doing some work on the Big Hole and its tributaries?

- Not that I'm aware of.

- We've reached out to them before for some funding.

We've gotten some funding on projects from George Grant, Trout Unlimited before.

Yeah, and so they've worked with us for some projects.

- All right.

Thank you.

From Miles City, the caller has a comment for me saying he doesn't have an ax sharp enough.

The caller says if you microwave winter squash for a couple minutes, they soften up to where you can cut them easily.

That thing would explode.

- I was expecting that.

(all laughing) - There's no doubt about it.

- So you have to put a hole in it first or will it... - But I don't have a drill sharp enough to get through there.

You know what I like about the Blue Hubbard in particular, when you do get it cut in half and you roast it, the shell is very hard.

And so when you scoop up the insides out with a spoon, you can get right up to the skin and you don't get any of the skin mixed in with the stuff you're going to eat.

- I don't want any of them.

- [Jake] So how do you cut it?

- I use a hatchet.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

- All right.

But this, you can cut this with a kitchen knife or cut it this way or cut them, you know.

These are really easy to get to.

- You know, they make good hog feed too.

Did you know that?

- I bet they do.

Yeah.

- No doubt about it.

Okay.

For both Jake and Katelin, this person from Bozeman would like to know how you monitor and enforce the water utilization part of the CCAA program.

- Yeah, so in each site specific plan, there is a diversionary flow limit.

So with all their water rights, if a flow trigger is hit on the Big Hole River, so say Wisdom hits 60 CFS, we would reach out to landowners in their management section, we have five management sections, and say, "Hey, are you irrigating?"

And figure out if they have any water to give.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And the one thing I'll say about that, it is voluntary.

They don't call us and say, "Hey, turn your water off."

They discuss it with us.

And that's throughout the program, they discuss everything with us.

We feel like we work good together.

We go look at the projects together, come up with a plan.

And if it fits our needs, we will turn some water down.

- And that's what I like about ranchers and Montana Fish and Wildlife, wilderness organizations working together because what benefits you financially can also benefit conservation.

And that point is not made often enough.

People that get involved with conservation projects are stewards of the land, and they usually benefited financially from doing that.

So it's a win-win as they call it.

- I think there can be a misconception that ag is hard on the land, but we want it to be there just as much as the next guy.

So we try to be good stewards of the land as well.

- And I agree with that 100%.

What I've seen here in the last five, six years, and I met a lot of the ranching community, the ranchers are really on top of things, 99% of them.

There's a few that are not, but in general, it's a very stable and healthy industry in this state.

Now, one that's not so healthy, Palmer amaranth.

The story in the state this year, we're starting to see Palmer amaranth.

How did that happen?

- Yeah, it's interesting.

- Well, first of all, tell us what it is.

- What is it?

Is it just a pigweed?

- Yeah, Palmer amaranth is a pigweed.

It's a warm season pigweed and it really- - Does it look different than the pigweed we already have, what I know?

- Yes, it does.

It'll get six to eight feet tall.

It can be huge.

The reason we worry about it a lot in the state, it really, it started out in the desert Southwest.

It may have actually been selected for for a while as a grain crop munch like some of the quinoas and other things, but it became a huge weed in pecans, cotton, then it went into the mid-south of the United States when Roundup ready cropping systems came around.

Now Iowa, 97% of the populations are resistant to huge rates of glyphosate.

And so it's a diecious pigweed, so it has a male plant and a female plant.

So it's forced to outcross.

So it's really genetically diverse.

Palmer amaranth, its sister species, waterhemp, were ranked one and two in the United States for the most difficult weeds to manage in crops.

And so it started spreading towards Montana.

We first found it up in Daniels County in about 2022, 2023, came and contaminated millet seed out of Colorado.

Last year we had a lot around bird feeders because the stuff you buy at the hardware store is pretty gross stuff.

It's filled with lots of weed seeds.

They did some studies and it's a lot of weed seeds.

Then recently we had quite a few populations show up in Montana, usually tied to sorghum Sudan or millet and millets of warm C4 grass that we plant in the eastern part of the state as a late growing, as a late forage grass.

And that's been one of the main vectors into the state is contaminated millet seeds.

So we just had an instance this week where a whole bunch of seed got sold around the state.

Turns out in the end it was contaminated with Palmer amaranth.

And so now we have to think about how we manage it and stay on top of it.

If it were to spread into pulse crops, Palmer amaranth and waterhemp, I really don't know what we would do.

So that's why we really work on the early detection rapid response.

- Millet's also a small seed, so that's hard to clean out.

If I were to buy certified millet seed, would it have on the tag and say... That would be listed as an option.

- It should.

Both waterhemp and Palmer amaranth are listed by the Montana Department of Ag as restricted weed seeds.

And so it's required to be on the label that it would be in there.

- [Jack] But nobody monitors what's in bird seed, is that correct?

- Yes, because it falls between the weed and seed laws.

So you technically, I think, call it wild bird food and it doesn't fall into our feed laws and it doesn't fall into our seed laws.

So it falls in between and so it's really not regulated.

And there's actually the stuff at the supermarket or the hardware store is often put together by whole sellers in far flung places of the United States.

Palmer Amaranth spread into Idaho actually from cotton meal, cotton seed that came out of cotton gin processing in Arizona and New Mexico, was brought in for dairy operations.

- The big thing is glyphosate won't control it.

- Won't touch it.

Nope.

- Yeah, so there's nothing out there that really does it whole, whole, whole, right?

- Yeah.

I mean it's a really, it gets harder and harder to manage and that's why you're like, okay, we really want to be on top of it.

- Okay.

- Yep.

Six way resistance exists out there to six modes of action.

- So here's a comment for you.

It came from Corvallis.

The caller says her husband cuts winter squash with a band saw.

It works.

- That's not a bad idea at all actually.

- [Tim] Or yeah, like a meat saw, band saw, yeah.

Actually that'd be... - So here's an interesting comment and it's from Bozeman.

The caller wants to know what grayling does for the environment that makes it worth protecting.

I'll add to that.

What do deer do for the environment that make it worth protecting?

So you can go ahead and give an answer there.

- Yeah, I mean, Arctic grayling are a part of Montana's heritage.

You know, it was there when Lewis and Clark came through.

A lot of the work we've done for Arctic grayling has benefited the system as a whole.

So when you improve habitat, a lot of what we're talking about today has helped the ranchers in the valley, but also there's benefits to moose, elk, deer, birds, anything that uses the riparian area, there's a benefit to.

And when we protect a native species, we're also helping prevent it from being listed under the Endangered Species Act, so there's recreation opportunities as well.

- I'm going to add to it.

It benefits cattle because you're doing better with cattle working with the CCAA program than you were before.

So it's a wide ranging benefit when you want to protect certain parts of the environment.

I happen to like grayling.

A quick story.

My dad grew up in the Midwest.

His favorite fish was a bullhead, which is a tiny catfish fried in a skillet with maybe some hash browns.

He caught a grayling out of Highlight Lake, the first trout he caught and the first grayling.

He was so impressed with that, they had to have it monitored.

It was a nice grayling, maybe two pounds.

That's illegal now because I think it's all catch and release, but he was fascinated by the beauty of the fish and I've always been fascinated by it.

So I love them.

They are beautiful fish.

- They are a beautiful fish.

- And there are some lakes where you can keep them and eat them.

I haven't tried them.

Some people like them, some people don't.

- Okay.

Thank you.

From Dylan.

You're kind of down in your home country a little bit.

This person would like to know the difference between a conservation benefit agreement and a CCAA agreement.

- Yeah, so the US Fish Wildlife Service combined two existing programs, the CCAA and Safe Harbor Agreement into one whole program.

So Safe Harbor was a program like the CCAA, but after a species was listed.

So they combined it into one program, Conservation Benefit Agreement.

The CCA program was started in 2006 and is a 20-year program, so that brings us here today into 2026.

We are currently renewing the program under the Conservation Benefit Agreement, and the program will function the same.

Thought it'll still be voluntary, you'll still get assurances, and enrollment will carry over.

The one thing that will change is we are renewing the program for 50 years, so that shows our investment in the program and how successful it's been that we want it to continue for another 50 years.

- Okay, Let's look a little bit at the history.

I think the grayling was first recommended to be on the Endangered Species Act way back in 1991, give or take a year.

And there's been continual efforts since then to place it on the Endangered Species Act.

Where does that stand today?

Do you have any clue?

- Yeah.

So the US Fish Wildlife Service was mandated by the court to make a new listing decision by February 2027.

So currently that's where we stand.

- So what you and the ranchers have accomplished probably will reduce the possibility of placing the grayling on an endangered species list?

- Yeah, the CCA program has been a huge part of previous listing decisions showing what progress has been done to improve habitat, and it shows future conditions will include this conservation program as well.

So it's been hugely beneficial in the past.

- Okay.

Excellent answers.

Thank you.

From Billings, and I always say I like comments and I pretty much screen them.

If they're decent, I'll use them, but if they're not, they don't get on.

This one's not bad from Billings.

The caller says the best way to deal with a Hubbard squash is hold it up somewhere between your knees and waist and drop it on a clean concrete surface.

It will create fractures that make it easy to process from there.

See what you're learning today?

- [Mac] Yeah, that's great.

(all laughing) - Okay.

From Miles City, interesting question.

I think I know the answer, but they want to know, are there any tax advantages to joining programs like CCAA?

- I don't believe so.

Not that we've seen.

- I couldn't think of any myself.

From Wisdom, question for Jake.

Caller wants to know who is the best help out at their ranch.

(all laughing) - No comment.

- I think I know where that came from.

- I do have pretty good dogs out there.

- How big is the county?

- I'll throw a bone to my wife.

Anyway, she's about the best.

- What's the population of Wisdom?

- About a hundred.

- Okay.

So you probably know most of them.

- Yeah.

- Fall cheatgrass control.

That came up a little last week, but I had a note here that we're supposed to cover it again.

And then you reminded me that there's something I have to ask you.

So fall cheatgrass control.

Is it the time?

- Yeah, once the snow melts, I think you should.

Yeah, it's interesting.

It's a question that's popped up quite a bit.

People are wondering what to do in alfalfa.

There's a lot of alfalfa regrowth this year 'cause we have this later spring and so people were looking at fairly tall stands of alfalfa and cheatgrass was germinating in it and what to do.

I think you probably have to take some of it off after it goes dormant and then you can apply a herbicide.

And if you get nice fall weather, there's plenty of opportunity to get rid of some of that cheatgrass in a pure alfalfa.

- [Mac] Even in November if it's warm, huh?

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

- It's green.

Once the cheatgrass sits over the winter and gets shot with ice needles and freeze and thaw and freeze and thawed, it's much harder to kill.

So really the best time, if you're going to harrow cheatgrass, you're going to rip it out.

Even fall is a much better time to do it than the springtime.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Jake, this person from Lincoln would like to know, are you involved with any other conservation programs on your ranch other than the one with the grayling?

- We did put a conservation easement on our ground probably about 15 years ago.

- So explain the benefits of conservation easements for an operation like yours.

- You know, conservation easements, it just kinda, we had some internal things that went on, you know, years back in our ranch.

It helped kind of get us out of a jam, kind of brought everything back.

Right now, you can 1031 that money and grow your operation to buy another place.

And the last thing I want to do is see it ever get split up.

You know, if it ever does get sold and for future generations, I would hate to see it get split up, so it protects it from that as well.

- Okay.

Thank you.

I do know that Fish and Wildlife Montana has conservation easements available.

Am I correct?

- [Katelin] I'm not sure.

- Okay.

I think they do.

I know Federal Fish and Wildlife do.

There's a fair number of ranchers that I've met over the last decade or so that have used conservation easements to purchase additional acres in a lot of areas of the state, the Bitterroot places like that.

From Clancy.

Caller has a comment on cooking smaller winter squash.

Well, you really hit it with winter squash.

(all laughing) He does it completely in the microwave.

He stabs the squash to vent, then cooks them for around 15 minutes until they're soft to the touch.

Another follow-up question from Celia Lake for Mac.

How would you store the squash for January consumption?

- That's a really good question actually.

Not in your refrigerator.

The ideal storage temperature is 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit and 50% humidity.

It can be warmer than that and it will just accelerate all the processes.

So sitting right here on this table, these will be in prime condition December into January.

No problem.

So sitting on your kitchen table.

If you have a cellar or a basement or in my case, our garage is insulated but not heated, so it stays above freezing, put some out there, it slows things down a little.

- They definitely don't rot.

- Well, eventually they will, but I mean, I've eaten these in July of the next year and the starches are turning into sugars and then the sugars are respiring and eventually they kind of lose a lot of their texture, but it takes quite a while, you know?

End of March, these can be really good eating.

- I hate to feed on the squash phenomenon, but somebody wants to find out about the squash with the warts on it.

Quickly, what's the name?

- I bought that at a farm stand this morning and I used the thing where you take a picture of it with your phone and it tells you what it is.

And best I can tell, that's a hybrid pumpkin called corncob.

I would say it is a cucumber to pepo based on the stem so.

And I don't know how it's going to be eaten, but I bought that this morning at a farm stand.

- All right.

So enough of that.

Away from squash.

A Bozeman caller says a longtime resident here remembers that in the late 1980s, can be specific about the date, the Big Hole River in parts of Montana went dry.

He also says that more recently, earlier in this past decade, we had a drought as severe as the 1980s and the river continued to flow.

You want to comment on why?

Both of you guys can jump in on this?

- Yeah, so in 1988, the Big Hole River went dry in Wisdom for about three weeks.

And what we've seen is we have had drought conditions, not just similar, but much worse than 1988.

And we've had consecutive years of drought.

And the Big Hole River has never gone dry since.

And it's been attributed to this program, working with these private landowners to make sure there's water always flowing in the Big Hole River.

- Okay, on that note, Jake, you know other people are involved with this project.

Do you guys ever get together over coffee and talk about what's going on with the program, so forth and so on?

- Oh, very much.

I mean, we talk, there's a few guys I talk to every day or five or six days a week, you know, and just about ranching in general.

And yeah, we'll touch on it or we're always, especially during irrigating season, we're always touching base to see what the water's doing, where it's at, is it up, is it down, you know, just to prepare for what's coming.

- Have you seen changes in the flow?

And maybe you guys can't answer this based on we're getting later falls, less mountain snow, it doesn't last as long.

Are you seeing a change in the flow rate on the Big Hole River?

Do you have any clue to that?

- I have not seen high, high water for, I'd say six or eight years.

I mean, there's years where we get a big gush and it'll flood the whole valley.

I haven't seen that for a while.

This year we were really worried.

We didn't have a lot of snow in the mountains, but it had a lot of moisture.

We got a fair amount of rain up there this winter, so it held, it was hard.

The snow was hard and there's a lot of moisture in it, so it came out just about right.

It was one of the better grass hay years I've seen in the Big Hole for... - Can I ask a question about, you said out irrigating.

You know, if you drive through that valley and you don't know what you're looking at and you're going 70 miles an hour, it's not obvious that there's irrigation going on 'cause it's not center pivots.

It's all flood irrigation.

How much of those streams or those ditches were dug by people at some point and all that?

I mean, when did all that infrastructure get put together?

- You know, I think our oldest water rights are in the 1880s, so that's when it all started and you got to hand it to them guys for getting done what they did with the equipment they had.

And really, we're not digging any new ditches, so it was all done right off the gate.

- So your day-to-day irrigating activity is driving around and moving head gates up and down?

- Moving sod, moving head gates, you know, repairing ditches and stuff.

But as for digging a new ditch and creating a new point of diversion in the creak, that is- - So basically flood that whole valley as uniformly as you can.

And that slows that water down quite a lot to make the- - What runs off our ground will run onto the neighbor and then they'll use it and so far down.

And then the valley soaks it up and it soaks.

Once the valley's wet, the river maintains flow a lot easier.

- Yeah, a lot of people refer to the Big Hole as a sponge.

Yep.

So we soak it and it oozes right back out over time.

- Okay, quick one from Clancy, and I like this question.

The caller wants to know the difference between river grayling, lake grayling, and Arctic grayling.

- So Arctic grayling, we're just calling it grayling for short.

It's all Arctic grayling.

For lake and our river population, so the Big Hole, that's our entirely fluvial population, meaning they live in the river year round.

In the Centennial Valley, they live in Upper Red Rock Lake in the winter, and then they use Red Rock Creek throughout the summer and spring.

And then we have our mountain lake populations.

But of our mountain lake populations, they are almost all Big Hole in Centennial Valley genetic origin.

So they were stocked originally from our source populations.

And if we're thinking back to the Endangered Species Act, in the upper Missouri River, we have a distinct population segment and they're considered all one big genetic population.

So in the Upper Missouri River, they are genetically distinct from the Alaska Arctic Grayling.

- Okay.

Thank you.

- [Mac] There had been a population in Michigan?

- Yes, correct.

And they were extirpated during the 20th century, and that was largely due to agriculture and forestry.

So a lot of the logging industry caused the riparian areas to be damaged and then they lost Arctic grayling.

So Michigan's working to get Arctic grayling back on the landscape, but in Montana, we've kept them.

- Okay.

Yeah.

That's great.

A beautiful fish.

We're running a little low on time, but I'm going to throw this out and I'll cut people off when we run out of time.

But Colin wants to know what the impact to ranchers and local communities would be if the grayling are listed as an endangered species.

I know we don't have a lot of time.

You guys want to take a quick shot at it?

- Yeah, I'll do a quick technical one for you.

So if Arctic grayling are listed, when it comes to our program, landowners will be asked to do what is in their site specific plan, but they will not be required to do anything beyond it.

- Okay.

And that's a big incentive for you guys to be involved with that.

Definitely.

You want to add to that?

- I think she hit it pretty good.

I mean, we just, yeah, if it is on the list, I would be very worried we would lose control of our water.

- [Jack] Okay.

We don't want to do that.

- No, we do not.

- Okay, Mac, quickly.

Tomatoes, can they cover them and expect them to survive?

- I mean, maybe survive, but it's October that we don't have any light left.

It's over.

Go get them in.

- Okay, folks.

Appreciate your viewing tonight.

Jake, thank you for coming over.

Katelin, I appreciate you being here.

I learned a lot tonight.

Very interesting program.

I want to see the Arctic grayling survive here.

So with that, next week, Andrea Sarchet will be here, safety education outreach coordinator on produce here in the state.

Join us.

Meanwhile, have a great week.

Good night.

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(bright music) - [Presenter] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by: the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardener's Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

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