Dearborn River Access Blocked

From @mdfishingoutfitters

If you care about your legal right to access and recreate on our rivers in Montana, please let Christy Clark of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks know how you feel about the fence the Mosher family constructed cutting off access to the Dearborn River at the High Bridge off County Road 435.

Three things that should concern us about this: One is that there is no way to portage around the obstruction even as the law states that one could legally trespass on private property to do so. Two, this is an obvious impedance for accessing the river from a legal bridge access point. A jack fence in the river does not allow for reasonable accessibility. Three, I talked to Warden Wolfisberg about this and his response was he could talk to the landowner but if they didn't want to remove the fence there's nothing he could about it. Statute 23-2-313(2)(a) clearly states that FWP is compeled to work with the landowner to come up with a solution to grant access while still protecting their stock.

This is clearly a violation of our public rights to recreate on the Dearborn River. As more and more people move to Montana, buying up ranches, and either not knowing the laws, worse, feeling like they don't need to follow our laws because they have money, we need to stand up and make it a point that we will not accept this. Please let FWP know how you feel.

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