Meet our Grayling Coordinator

Last year, a partnership of private and public organizations and agencies, including the

Foundation and the Watershed Committee, began a profound collaboration in an effort which

is hoped to lead to recovery of fluvial Arctic grayling in the Big Hole basin. Because of the

scope of this effort, it soon became apparent that there was a need for increased

communication and coordination among Partners.

We realized we had an opportunity to increase the capacity of all involved by coordinating our

efforts, thereby reducing redundancy and sharing the grant-writing and fund-raising burden.

As a group, we made the decision to hire a coordinator to serve as that liaison. The Big Hole

River Foundation agreed to support a portion of the position through their CPI grant and the

rest comes from the BHWC.

The position was advertised regionally from Great Falls to Bozeman. We interviewed some exceptional candidates and were fortunate to hire Kristina Swanson, from Missoula. Kristina

has twenty years of professional experience in human service administration, and is currently working toward a Masters Degree in Public Administration at the University of Montana. Those who have worked with her describe her as “visionary”.  And if that is not good enough, she also has exceptional grant writing skills, fantastic people, organizational, and communication skills, and she is a very hard worker. Our partnership will challenge her in all of these areas.  Kristina loves playing outdoors – hiking, backpacking, skiing and boating.  She’s always been fond of the Big Hole and looks forward to meeting and working with everyone here