The Upper Ruby River in southwest Montana is home to a fledgling population of arctic grayling. This population is the result of a joint restoration and re-introduction project between the U.S. Forest Service, Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks, Trout Unlimited, and American Wildlands. Although many re-introduced grayling are surviving into adulthood, there has not yet been any documented natural spawning. For now, the population is still dependent on eggs that are hatched in small human-made incubators placed in tributaries of the Ruby.

In order to successfully spawn in the spring, grayling need the proper spawning habitat—tributaries with cold, rock-bottomed, sediment free water. Unfortunately, the tributaries of the Ruby River where grayling have been introduced and hatched in—and thus would return to spawn—lack these important conditions. Last fall, to create natural spawning habitat where grayling could lay their eggs, American Wildlands’ staff spent a day working with the fisheries biologist of the local Forest Service office to place loads of gravel into stream bottoms.

This past May, AWL’s Shawn Regnerus re-visited the project site to see how well our work had withstood the high-water of spring runoff. The results were encouraging. Despite the fact that the water was high, which caused most of the other nearby streams to run brown with silt, the project stream was running clean and sediment free—a good habitat for grayling reproduction.

During his visit, Shawn did not see any adult grayling in the project stream. The lack of grayling could have been due to his being there at the wrong time, or some other factor(s) that kept the adults from returning to that particular project site. In order to bolster our chances of restoring natural spawning, American Wildlands should not “put all of our eggs in that one basket”—or assume one restored spawning area will do the trick. This summer, American Wildlands will again join with the Forest Service to establish natural spawning habitat in other tributaries of the Ruby where grayling have been introduced and would instinctively return to spawn.