Excerpts:
More than 90 years after dams started to choke off the Upper Missouri River, government officials are drafting a plan to restore the river's natural flow to boost its endangered fish and ailing stands of cottonwood trees.
The river courses for almost 150 miles through the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, a remote and largely undeveloped badlands in central Montana set aside by President Bill Clinton in 2001. Its upstream reaches and tributaries are dammed off for power production and irrigation.
