“Is Collaboration a Lost Art?”

Draft 2.0 (unfinished)
November 6, 2025

 

To some, it’s their Mecca, their Valhalla, the Holy Grail. The prestigious Trout Unlimited magazine voted it #1 out of the top 100 streams in the country.

Yet all that love and fame was not going to save the Henrys Fork of the Snake River. It would take a change of heart from irrigators and from anglers.

And that change of heart would require a catastrophe, causing at least two people from the warring parties to step out of their comfort zone and begin talking to each other.

Collaboration is like that sometimes. It can start out small, with little hope of success... until people wonder how anything ever got done without it.

 

The catastrophe that got them talking was a man-made one. In 1992 the Bureau of Reclamation and the Idaho Fish & Game Department drew down the Island Park Reservoir to kill trash fish, like suckers and chubs.

The historically low drawdown sent more than 50,000 tons of mud and silt downstream, turning the famous Henrys Fork into a muddy mess. Insects and trout died, spawning beds were destroyed, and anglers and tourists stopped arriving. The nearby small towns suffered.

It had become painfully obvious that irrigators and anglers and a handful of agencies with jurisdiction on the river were not communicating with each other.

 

And that’s when Jan Brown, the executive director of the nonprofit Henrys Fork Foundation, decided it was time to begin talking to the enemy. The Foundation had forged significant successes since its inception in 1984. But its militant approach was not sitting well with many irrigators, the ones who owned the water.

 

“We joked that the irrigators would all be rednecks, and they thought we'd all have ponytails,” said Jan. “I mean, everyone had stereotypes.”

Dale Swenson, the executive director of the Fremont-Madison Irrigation District, was the other one who stepped forward.“That's what we had to do as irrigators is let down our guard and realize that the Henry's Fork Foundation and other groups like them were looking out for the good of the river,” he told us in an interview. “At least we had to trust that’s what they were there for.”

The conflict had its roots a century earlier, when farmers and ranchers realized how lush the Henrys Fork watershed was. They then built dams and began de-watering the river.

Not long afterward rich anglers, many of them from the Salt Lake area, discovered the remarkable fishery. They then built fishing camps and lodges and began advertising.  

 

 

Outdoor Idaho devoted several entire programs to the Henry’s Fork and Henry’s Lake. The complexity of the river system had always intrigued us. Not only is a shallow lake the start of the famous river, but 10 miles downstream a miraculous spring bubbles from the ground.

Big Springs, the true headwaters of the river, is one of the largest natural springs in the U.S. The water is a constant 52 degrees, and there’s plenty of it: 120 million gallons of water a day replenish the river, making it ideal habitat for big trout.

One of the great joys in life is standing on the nearby historic railroad bridge, watching huge trout swimming lazily by. No fish ever had it so good. No human could avoid falling in love with the specialness of the Henrys Fork.

That love shone through in our 1996 program “On the Henry’s Fork.” We also documented the formation of the Henrys Fork Watershed Council, a collaboration that ended a century of animosity.

 

“We weren’t talking to each other,” said Jan, “so everyone gathered at Elk Creek Ranch and had kind of a soul-searching session.

“We knew we had to start doing business differently. The same characters, same players, no one needed to change their missions, but we needed to have some vehicle, some entity, some forum that we could come together and talk with one another on a regular basis.”

 

And so, out of a sense of frustration, distrust, and even fear, the Watershed Council was born, thanks in large part to Jan and Dale. The group advocated for a total conservation package for the watershed. They even participated in team-building activities to encourage trust and cooperation.

“Once we got acquainted, we found maybe 80 percent of all the issues we could agree on,” said Jan.

 

Still, the smart money gave the Watershed Council 12 months. It’s hard to get past a century of bad blood. But the council has grown and is still meeting on a regular basis.

 

More important, it is now seen as the moral authority of the region. It has also become the model for other collaborations throughout the West.

 

 

Idaho is lucky. Collaboration seems part of the state’s collective DNA. Think of the Nez Perce nation and the Corps of Discovery, one desperately in need of food and horses to continue the expedition to the Pacific Ocean, and the other wanting trade goods and weapons to strengthen them against their rivals.

Collaboration can come in all shapes and sizes. The Idaho National Laboratory’s partnering with the state’s universities to create breakthroughs in energy, nuclear and security research...
The Albertson Library at Boise State University collaborating with Idaho's largest independent music store, the Record Exchange, to preserve Idaho’s music history.

It was collaboration that allowed two state agencies to create something that was rare in the world of television.

Idaho’s Fish & Game Department brought to the table experts who were knowledgeable in the ways of wildlife. Idaho Public Television brought a statewide network and an understanding of how to produce a TV program.

 

In Washington, D.C., with the passage of the White Clouds Wilderness, the phrase floating around the halls of Congress was “the Idaho way.”

 

Before he became chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, Idaho native Jim Jones served two terms as the state’s Attorney General.

"During my two terms as Attorney General in the 1980s, those of us in state government took it as an article of faith that we should work across the aisle to advance the public good,” said Justice Jones. “Both of the Governors with whom I served--John Evans and Cecil Andrus-- were of opposite parties from me. They were Democrats and I was a Republican. While we had dust-ups at times, that did not impede public business.”

In one of the most pivotal battles fought largely behind closed doors, Jim and Governor Evans worked hand-in-glove on the Swan Falls water-rights fight. “Our cooperation was largely behind the scenes,” said Jim, but we were both committed to keeping Idaho Power Company from controlling the Snake River flow.”

Jim handled the legal work and blasted the power company in the press. Governor Evans threatened veto power over legislation favored by Idaho Power. “We prevailed,” said Jim, “but it could not have been done separately.”

 

One issue that Outdoor Idaho reported on was the attempt to clean up Lake Coeur d’Alene, voted one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. Houses around the lake were contributing to higher nitrogen levels in the lake, which was affecting the water quality and ... (yet to complete this example)

And then there are all the environmental collaborations, to end The Timber Wars.... (add several paragraphs to this)

Outdoor Idaho devoted an entire show to the collaboration featuring cowboy country and enviros in the Owyhee Canyonlands... (this will be longish and perhaps end the chapter; if I’ve already included too much of this in previous chapters, I’ll likely cut back in the other chapters so that this chapter features it)...

So... bottom line, this is a draft and it’s hardly complete... and meeting with John and Craig next week should help fill in the blanks and make suggestions about the above. Guessing they will demand an extra large latte with whipped cream for their efforts.