Boundary County residents are well aware of the ongoing effort over recent years to restore the population of the Kootenai River's signature fish, the white sturgeon.

Now, a movie shot largely in Boundary County is telling the story to the world.

The movie, The Fish Between the Falls, was produced by filmmaker George Sibley, who has made several movies about our region.  In telling the story of the white sturgeon of the Kootenai, about 40% of the river scenes in the movie were filmed in Boundary County, the remainder filmed in Montana and in British Columbia's Kootenay Lake.

Mr. Sibley's movie will have its Boundary County premier next Friday, March 20, at the Boundary County Museum.   The movie will also be shown at towns up and down the Kootenai River in Montana and Canada on other dates, and later in Coeur d'Alene.

Efforts to restore sturgeon population documented in movie

The once abundant white sturgeon of the Kootenai  River constituted a valuable social, economic, and sustenance fishery for many generations for the Kootenai Tribe and later for others who settled in the area.  For a variety of reasons, sturgeon populations went into marked decline beginning around the middle of the last century.

The Kootenai Tribe began their original hatchery program in 1989, with initial efforts directed toward conservation of the Kootenai River's white sturgeon.  The Kootenai River sturgeon were eventually designated as "Endangered" in 1994, under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

Partnering with several other organizations, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the University of Idaho's Aquaculture Research Institute, the Bonneville Power Administration, the British Columbia Ministry of Environment, along with other stakeholders, the Tribe's aquaculture program dedicated toward conservation of the Kootenai River white sturgeon (along with the river's burbot population) has met with significant success over the years.

Capturing that success story was the goal for Mr. Sibley, and putting the story on film makes the ongoing efforts to boost the sturgeon population a great cinematic narrative.

Making the movie

Mr. Sibley, who grew up in Massachusetts but now lives in Florida, says it took over two years to make the movie, starting back in 2013, making trips to the Kootenai usually in the spring and fall seasons of the year, in order to shoot the processes and scenes that make up sturgeon aquaculture and efforts to re-introduce the fish into the river.

"My wife and I have been coming out this way since the 1980's, because we love the scenery and the history and the people here," said Mr. Sibley.   "When I started making independent films, I wanted to concentrate on subjects that interested me, but which I felt were not getting enough attention from the mainstream media, and if I could find those subjects in an area I also liked to be in, so much the better."

Besides the Kootenai River and Boundary County, other filming locales for The Fish Between the Falls included Massachusetts, California, Spokane, and other areas.  Filming in these more distant locations was necessary because of research centers in those areas that are studying sturgeon and helping to develop the science of restoring the sturgeon population in the Kootenai.

"As you will see in the film, this is a project that is not just about working in the river.  What happens there is shaped by people in laboratories and offices and engineering cubicles in Massachusetts and California, in Spokane and in Kalispell, and I filmed in all those places too," said Mr. Sibley.

What is it like making a movie about sturgeon, and filming in this area?

"Filming animals is always a difficult job, but that job is even harder when the animals to be filmed are fish,"says Mr. Sibley.   White sturgeon are the largest and one of the oldest fish in North America. Kootenai River white sturgeon are a special population of these special fish, found only in the Kootenai River flowing through northern Montana and the panhandle of Idaho and up into British Columbia.

Big fish, small boat.  That was one of the biggest filming problems of producing a film about the endangered population of Kootenai River white sturgeon.  Mr.  Sibley used fixed cameras occasionally to film fishing activities, but often worked right beside the crew, in a tricky dance between him and fishers in order to get dramatic shots for the movie without capsizing the boat.

Areas around the U.S. and Canada also involved

Experts across the United States and Canada are part of the Kootenai River Sturgeon Recovery Team, and many of these experts from coast to coast shared their stories for the movie.  On the east coast, for example, Sibley documented work by Dr. Boyd Kynard of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who probably is the world’s expert on the early life stages of sturgeon, in his experiments to determine what size rocks the free embryos of Kootenai River white sturgeon prefer. Then, out on the west coast, Sibley filmed genetic researchers at the University of California-Davis for the movie.

Sibley traveled through time as well, in a sense, recreating the early Kootenai River as it might have looked at the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago.

 Boundary County movie making can be challenging

Making a movie in Boundary County has its own challenges, including challenges not usually found in Hollywood movie making.

For example, Kokanee salmon are an important part of the food chain for sturgeon. As bears are also after Kokanee, assistants had to keep a watchful eye out for bears wandering nearby during filming.

The environment of rivers and streams can also present a challenge.  Viking Diving Equipment contributed protective gear to allow Sibley to film in cold rivers and streams, and to get up close and personal with his aquatic subjects. Sibley also rigged his camera to a special pole, carrying his lens closer to the fish in a less threatening way.

 After spending a lot of time in Boundary County over the years, and making this and a few other movies about our region, Mr. Sibley has come to enjoy our area.  "I like the place a lot," he said, "and parts of my previous two films, about the fur trader and map-maker David Thompson and about the big fires of 1910, were also shot here.  It's a great place for history, and also, with this film, for science."

One of the biggest river and fish restoration projects ever attempted is happening right in our own Boundary County backyard. This film, The Fish Between the Falls, is telling its story to the world.

Some final details

The Fish Between The Falls is a Gale Force Films Production with narration, photography and editing by George Sibley. Previous films produced by Sibley are Shadows of David Thompson in 2008, Ordeal by Fire in 2010 (about the 1910 forest fires), and The River of the West Driving Tour about the International Selkirk Loop.

The Fish Between The Falls will have its Bonners Ferry premier on Friday, March 20 at 7:00 p.m. at the Boundary County Museum, 7229 Main Street, Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Donations, to help support this program in the Museum, will be accepted at the door.

Other films by George Sibley are sold in museums around the area, and are also available for purchase as DVDs or as downloads from Amazon.com.

To see the full, official poster about this upcoming movie, click here.