Consider it a homecoming. This spring, for the first time since the late 1800s, saugers, suckers, channel catfish, pallid sturgeon, and other fish species are migrating from the Yellowstone River up the Tongue River past a dam to spawning waters far upstream. The fish are able to circumvent 12-Mile Dam and swim an additional 50 miles thanks to a recently constructed 760-foot-long, rock-lined side channel, called the Muggli Fish Passage. [Full Story]

Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area, 30 miles west of Great Falls, is Montana’s best-known birding site. Each year birders from across Montana and throughout the United States visit the shallow, 1,500-acre basin, which attracts 100-plus species, from avocets to yellowthroats. [Full Story]