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It is a hot, dry summer in Montana. Countless wildfires are popping up all over.

Everything is crisp and brown around you, yet the local river is still flowing with cool, blue water. The possibility of having this resource is thanks to the dedication of locally-led groups working on protecting the water and restoring the landscape across the state. The #WatershedSummer campaign is the foremost way to celebrate those Watershed Groups keeping rivers clean and cool for their communities! You can join in on this celebration for the whole summer, from June 20 through September 22, on Facebook and Instagram. 

Watershed Groups across Montana provide a great service to their communities. They focus on local water issues, like flooding, pollution, and storage, that can have impacts across the continent. Since Montana is a headwaters state, all the water that starts here flows somewhere else. And when there is too much, too little, or the water is contaminated, everyone downstream will have to deal with the consequences. But, if hardly anyone knows about these groups’ good stewardship, then how will they get the support to continue? That is where the #WatershedSummer campaign comes in.

Every group that registers gets a day assigned when they will be highlighted on our social media. We then work with each group to come up with ideas for their posts, make edits, and finally post their picture and captions to our social media pages. 

This campaign takes a burden off of the Watershed Coordinators who are often the only staff at their organization to help increase the number of people who can find out about their work. We share these stories on our pages because many of these groups are small and only have a few followers or sometimes no social media at all. Also, our pages provide a statewide audience. 

How do these groups feel about the campaign? When asked about their experience during the 2024 campaign, Karen Wickersham from the Thompson Chain of Lakes Stewardship Coalition said, “Thank you so much for creating this outreach opportunity! We need the help getting info out about our small nonprofit!”

In our first year of the campaign, we had 24 groups highlighted on our social media, and in the following year, that number increased to 33. And that is not the only thing that went up. The engagement for the campaign is tremendous, with a total of over 30,000 views and nearly 1,500 engagements in the last year alone. We are striving to increase both the number of groups that we highlight and the level of engagement again this year.

A participant since the initial campaign, Kendall Wojack from the Winnett ACES said, “It was fun, and we got some new followers from it!” So, join us in the fun this year; like and follow the Montana Watershed Coordination Council on Facebook and Instagram to see when #WatershedSummer debuts.