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Tubers enjoy a float through Bear Trap Canyon on the Madison River, Wednesday. The Madison-Gallatin Chapter of Trout Unlimited will hold its 4th Annual Madison River Clean Up and BBQ on Saturday. Photo by Ben Pierce.

The Madison River isn’t being loved to death; it’s being loved a lot though.

That’s according to Bureau of Land Management park ranger Matt Blocker of the Dillon Field Office who patrols the river and helps maintain its facilities.

“Use keeps increasing each year,” Blocker said on Tuesday. “The number of people on the river keeps rising. I don’t know where they are coming from.”

You can visit the Madison nearly any warm afternoon during the summer to see what Blocker is talking about. On hot days the water is swarming with anglers, boaters and float tubers enjoying the scenic splendor of the canyon … and leaving rubbish behind.

This Saturday, the Madison-Gallatin Chapter of Trout Unlimited (MGTU) will hold its 4th Annual Madison River Clean Up and BBQ. And they’re looking for a few good men and women to help out.

“Anybody can come help,” said Dan Lohmiller, vice president of MGTU. “We’ll have extra boats for people that want to float.”

Lohmiller said volunteers are needed to float and walk the Lower Madison from Warm Springs to Greycliff fishing access sites. Volunteers in boats will clean trash from the river bottom and river banks while volunteers on foot are needed to clean the road and various access points along the river.

Tim Finger, BLM outdoor recreation planner, said the Madison River corridor saw 477,000 visitors in 2009. He said the number of recreationists using the river exceeds the carry capacity of its facilities.

The parking lots fill up, the river gets crowded and trash inevitably makes its way into the water.

“The Upper Madison is primarily fly fishermen and we are able to keep that under control,” Finger said. “The middle portion is whitewater which we keep under control. The lower section is where we have that urban interface with the Bozeman community and that area is over-saturated with recreationists in the summer.

“It is getting to the point where we need shuttle bus services between the access sites.”

Finger said there are three primary user groups on the Madison – anglers, boaters and a temporary but increasingly large number of float tubers.

“When the weather hits 85 degrees, everybody grabs a float tube and heads to the Lower Madison River,” Finger said.

To combat increased use the BLM has taken measures such as working with the Montana Department of Transportation to encourage traffic to use alternate routes and supplying the public with mesh trash bags to collect their rubbish during their time on the river.

Lohmiller, who has participated in several MGTU river cleanups, said the trash bags seem to be working.

“Those mesh bags have really helped with people picking up their own trash,” Lohmiller said on Monday. “There was much more trash in the past.”

Blocker said the bags are available at Warm Springs Fishing Access Site. The idea is for recreationists to use the bags during their float, empty trash in the dumpster at the Blacks Ford takeout and deposit the mesh bags in a receptacle to be recycled for future floaters.

“People always say it is a great idea when I am refilling (the bags),” Blocker said. “It has been a great program.”

Still, the BLM’s Dillon Field Office, with its staff of just two river rangers and two park rangers to service 15 recreation sites, are simply unable to keep up with the persistent onslaught of garbage.

Finger said partnerships with groups like MGTU are essential to keeping the river clean.

“There is no way we could provide the quality recreational opportunities we do without the help of the public,” Finger said. As often as we go down and clean the trash or restrooms, the community’s support is critical.”

Finger said the BLM is focused not just on managing the Madison River for recreation, but also protecting the resource. He said that removing trash from the river on a regular basis keeps rubbish from becoming embedded in the weeds and bankside vegetation. Once that trash gets embedded, it is much harder to remove, Finger said.

In recent years the Lower Madison River Clean Up and BBQ has attracted 40-50 volunteers, Blocker said. This year’s response has been low, according to MGTU president Travis Morris, and Finger is hoping more volunteers turn up for Saturday’s event.

“Montanans are pretty good stewards of the land,” Finger said, “but we want to get as many people as we can to take care of it. It is not the BLM’s river; it is everybody’s river.”

Related posts:

1. Madison River Foundation receives grant from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks
2. Gallatin Wildlife Association to hold clean-up along Gallatin River on Monday
3. Fishing report: Spring midge hatch on the Madison River has trout looking up
4. Year of the worm? San Juan strikes first trout of season on Lower Madison River
5. Salmonflies spotted on Lower Madison

Tags: Bureau of Land Management

This entry was posted by Ben Pierce on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 9:43 am and is filed under Bear Trap Canyon, Boating, Bozeman, Conservation, Fishing, Madison River, Trout Unlimited. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.