LIVINGSTON — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has been working to re-open fishing access sites along the Yellowstone River since those historic floods earlier this spring. On today's This Week in Fish and Wildlife, MTN’s Chet layman visits one of the sites that will not be re-opening because of a serious safety issue.
The Mallards Rest Fishing Access just south of Livingston is also a campground and is very popular. Erosion by the river from those spring floods currently makes the access road unsafe to use.
Chet met with FWP’s Jay Pape at the site. Jay showed him how unsafe the road is. He took a metal bar and just tapped on the edge of the roadway. That tapping alone causes sections of the road bank to collapse. Pape asks people to imagine what an RV or boat trailer would do if they passed over this section of road? Pape says a memorial bench and several sections of fencing that have been in the area for some time are now gone because of the bank erosion. He says it's about 60 vertical feet down to the river. The instability of the road is forcing FWP to keep Mallards Rest closed, but work is being done to try to re-open it as quickly as possible.
