Hailey Smalley | Daily Inter Lake
Aquatic invasive species continued to spread in 2025 despite the best efforts of state wildlife officials.
Volunteers and biologists took 3,200 samples from more than 300 Montana waterbodies in 2025. The samples were analyzed for eDNA and other microscopic particles indicative of the bevy of invasive aquatic species that have descended on North America’s waterways in the past decades.
By the end of the year, state officials had catalogued about a dozen new occurrences of aquatic invasive species in the state.
Tom Woolf, the Aquatic Invasive Species Bureau chief for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said he wasn’t surprised to see samples from Salmon Lake test positive for the invasive faucet snail. Nearby waterbodies in the Swan Valley had already shown signs of the snail, and Woolf surmised that the lake, which sits just north of Clearwater, was already a lost cause.
Fragrant waterlily was detected for the first time in Middle Foy Lake, and two species of snail, one hailing from New Zealand and the other from Malaysia, expanded to lakes in eastern Montana.
All four species had been found in Montana previously.
BUT THE war against aquatic invasive species is far from over, said Woolf, and the best way to fight the incursion is to target the boats that ferry species from one waterbody to the next.
“They’re the alien spaceship that’s going to introduce them to the state, and we have to make sure we get them,” said Woolf at a Jan. 21 meeting of the Western Montana Conservation Commission.