State officials to make decision on Bull River boating restrictions

Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission members will decide at its Thursday meeting in Helena on whether to implement changes involving motorized boats on the Bull River.

Officials have three options to consider, including a complete restriction involving powered water craft, an alternative limiting the engine horsepower of boats on the section of river or no change.

The meeting will be streamed live on Fish, Wildlife & Parks' website and YouTube.    

The commission will take public comment on agenda items from registered commenters on Zoom. Registration for public comment ends at noon Wednesday. To register, go to https://fwp.mt.gov/aboutfwp/commission/june-2025-meeting. 

After multiple speed boats powered through an area last summer where local landowner Paul Overman and two more generations of his family has spent decades enjoying the waterway, he sprung into action.

Overman sought and got the names of 271 people who signed his petition seeking a regulation that powered water craft will not be allowed on the Bull River from its headwaters in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness to the confluence of the Clarkfork River near Noxon.

Most petition signers were from nearby Heron, Noxon, Trout Creek, Troy and Libby, but he also had signers from Montana locales as far away as Belgrade and Billings as well as people from South Dakota, Washington, Idaho, Georgia and Florida. 

According to previous reporting in the Daily Inter Lake, the commission voted to accept a petition calling for the regulation of motorized watercraft on the Bull River in western Montana.

“I’ve been playing on the Bull River since I was a boy, and now my kids, my grandkids. We all spend a lot of time by or in the river,” said the petition’s author, Overman told the Inter Lake. “It’s been a quiet peaceful safe river for years.” 

“I am concerned that, if allowed, we will have more and more high-speed boats, jet boats, etcetera coming up the river that will put our stream banks at high risk,” said Overman.  

Representatives from the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Cabinet Resource Group pointed out the disastrous impact that stream bank erosion and large boat wakes could have on threatened bull trout populations that spawn in the river. 

Other proponents voiced concerns about the safety of floaters and anglers.