Brian and April Fox of Turner, MT were recently honored as the 2024 MT Ducks Unlimited (DU) Landowner of the Year. DU Biologist Adam McDaniel expressed a deep respect for how Fox has managed his operation and the well-being of the land as he presented the award. “Brian exemplifies the kind of rancher we like to work with – he values his operation, the land, and wildlife. He focuses on making decisions to improve both the health of his operation and the habitat, ensuring his ranch will continue to prosper down the road.” His holistic approach to land management has built a vast partnership with conservation agencies such as Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, The Nature Conservancy, Montana Conservation Corps, Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, Partners for Wildlife, and others, all working towards a common goal of keeping habitat and producers on the landscape.
Read more about Brian Fox below.
STREAM REVIVAL by Andrew McKean, excerpt from, “A View from the Hi-Line,” originally published in the March/April issue of DU Magazine. Read the full article here.
Brian Fox drives like a banshee across miles of same-looking wheat fields until the gravel road drops into a draw and winds through eroded badlands. It’s almost sunset, and Fox is in a hurry to show me his pasture while there’s still light to see. As he drives, he prepares me for what’s ahead.
“I bought this place in 2012 to expand my operation,” says Fox, who farms wheat on the benches and grazes cattle along prairie streams that eventually make their way south to the Milk River. “I have to make a paycheck, and I rely on cattle to make that payment. I rely on grass to grow my cattle, but in drought years these pastures can’t grow enough grass. When it’s dry, I had to cut my stocking rate, and was wondering if I had made a bad financial decision” with the pasture acquisition.
A couple summers ago, in an especially dry season, Fox was on his ATV, following a dry stream through his pasture in search of a lost cow, when he rounded a bend and “the whole valley exploded in ducks. There was a hidden oasis of water and cattails and birds.”
Beavers had dammed the stream and in the course of a single season had transformed the parched pasture.
“I asked around, and none of my neighbors could remember beavers on this creek in their lifetimes, and probably their parents’ lifetimes,” says Fox. “I don’t know where they came from.”
Prairie beavers were hit hard during the fur-trading decades. Later, ranchers shot or trapped them because of their tendency to cut down precious trees or because they turned pastures into sloughs. But those very tendencies are forcing a reconsideration of the ecosystem benefits of the rodents.
We’ve reached his pasture, and stop at a dry stream that I could jump with a running start. This is the creek that beavers dammed a mile downstream. Fox points to a lattice of willow branches woven around what look like wooden surveyors’ stakes pounded in the eroded bank of the creek. It’s frankly underwhelming, but Fox is gushing about what it represents.
“That’s one of about 75 structures that are called beaver-dam analogs, and thanks to them in a couple years, you won’t be able to stand here,” says Fox, who says the BDA project was funded by “an alphabet-soup” of conservation agencies after Fox told them about the presence of beavers here. If the structures work to slow current during runoff season, trap sediment, and restore meanders to the stream, then this should become a boggy, verdant spot in the otherwise parched prairie. There’s further hope that once the stream slows and retains water, beavers will move in and further improve the hydrology, which includes raising the water table along the creek to grow more grass, willows, and shrubs.
“When they work right, BDAs help creeks like this remember how to be a creek,” says Ducks Unlimited biologist Adam McDaniel, who has joined us.
For McDaniel and other conservation programmers, the cost of materials and labor and Corps of Engineers permits to install the beaver-dam analogs is a smart investment for years of return. And they’re encouraged that Fox wants to investigate further infrastructure investments, including a well that would allow him to graze more cattle, but which would also keep his cows away from the sensitive riparian corridor, where biologists have discovered one of the most northerly leks, or breeding grounds, for sage grouse.
But the presence of ducks obviously excites Fox, an avid waterfowler.
“I’m not saying that I’d hunt them on my creek, but it’s nice to know that I could,” he says.