Working with Local Governments to Protect Wetlands, Homes, Agriculture & Wildlife

NAME: Janet Ellis

LOCATION: Helena, MT

ORGANIZATION: Montana Audubon

For twenty years, Janet Ellis has worked to protect some of Montana’s most important natural areas. Working with residents, local government bodies, and conservationists around the state, Janet has dedicated herself to conserving wetlands and riverside areas. It’s not hard to see why it’s such important work. As Janet says, protecting wetlands and riverside areas is about controlling water pollution, protecting homes from flooding, preventing erosion, benefiting recreationists and the economy, providing vital habitat for wildlife, and maintaining the late summer stream flows so critical for irrigating crops, watering stock, and recharging aquifers.

For her TogetherGreen Conservation Action Project, Janet intends to continue this important work by supporting a project with a local government body that is interested in adopting stream protection measures but has been thwarted in its efforts to do so in the past. She hopes to determine why past efforts have failed, and then create a campaign to help the local government adopt stream and wetland protection measures. She’s particularly interested in developing messages that help residents understand and speak out about the value of such measures. Along the way, she intends to document lessons that other local government bodies can learn from in their quest to protect streams and wetlands in their areas.

Janet has a track record of success in this area: she persuaded Montana’s Lewis and Clark County’s Planning Board to recommend riparian and wetland setbacks be added to the county’s subdivision regulations. The Planning Board’s recommendations were eventually incorporated into regulations by the County Commissioners in 2005, helping protect approximately 200 miles of rivers, 1,000 miles of streams, 21,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs, and wetlands throughout the county. Not bad!