For the hundredth time that week, Jay Wilde gazed at the dry creek on the ranch his family had owned for decades. Birch Creek used to run all year round when he was a boy, so he was trying to recall what had changed on the property. He was now lucky if they managed to get water for half a year. After thirty years away, Wilde returned to his ranch in southern Idaho in 1995 to manage cattle. The cows also required water.
“Without water, it was becoming really hard for me to manage the ranch,” Wilde says. “In the end, I installed a water system for the cows to use, but I didn’t think it made sense for the stream to be disappearing.
