Madison River Management

[ScottP]

Has out of state tourist traffic still been high with the long recession and high gas prices? Busy rivers like Madison, Big Horn, etc. are not high on my priority lists because they are zoos.

A lot of waters in the west are on federal property, and are no more the locals' waters than they are anyone else.

A lot of people living in and around SW MT tare not real Montanans anyway, but are outsiders that transplanted there. They perturb the multigenerationals more than tourists do, and they hate Californians and northeastern yankees the worst (isn't that the way that it is everywhere?).

I think higher gas prices and a slower economy are keeping people from taking "big" trips (overseas, cruises, etc); doesn't seem to be effecting crowds on the rivers much. As for Montanans hating Californians, all I can say is a number of them (not all Cali's but a lot, many of them famous) came to Whitefish in the late 80's, built huge vacation homes on Big Mountain (which they inhabit 2 weeks in the summer and 2 weeks in the winter), drove up the cost of living in the town so that it seems a majority of the people living there are wealthy or barely scraping by. Not the only town this has happened in either.

Regards,
Scott