As Fight for Water Heats Up, Prized Fish Suffer

It’s a simple fact of life across the rural West, as it is in Montana’s mountain-ringed Big Hole River Valley. Flooding river bottoms to grow hay sustains the economy but means less water in the river for the prized wild trout population.

The competition for water is not new, but it is intensifying as the climate here gets warmer and drier. The biggest worry for trout is that smaller streams will simply run dry in late summer and temperatures in the remaining pools will exceed lethal levels.

By all accounts, these kinds of changes in the West’s celebrated trout fisheries are happening quickly — faster, experts say, than in other parts of the country. A new report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, based on research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows temperatures in the West the last five years increased by 1.7 percent, compared with 1 percent elsewhere, and the changes are expected to accelerate.

[Read](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/earth/01trout.html?ex=1365048000&en=9af4011290431f84&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss “Read the Article”) (New York Times)