State guide
Montana Mitigation Banks & Credits
Montana has 19 open-market mitigation banks and 14 in-lieu fee sites offering wetland and stream credits, and recorded 207 credit sales — credit withdrawals in the federal ledger — over 2016–2025. This page mirrors the federal USACE RIBITS registry: live availability by credit class and watershed, the banks serving Montana, and how the state's permitting program relates to the federal one.
Montana ranks #31 of 50 states by credit sales recorded in the RIBITS ledger over 2016–2025 — 207 sales across 15 sellers. All states ranked
Figures mirrored from USACE RIBITS · synced
Montana mitigation bank map
Montana Stream Mitigation Credits
12 stream banks & sites have credits available now in Montana. Banks are sorted by available quantity.
Which of these banks can serve your site? Approved service area decides eligibility, so resolve a location before you shortlist.
Find eligible banksMontana Wetland Mitigation Credits
11 wetland banks & sites have credits available now in Montana. Banks are sorted by available quantity.
Mitigation banks pending approval in Montana
3 mitigation banks have applied for approval to sell credits in Montana and are still under review. Pending means the reviewing agency has not approved them yet, so they cannot sell credits here today. They are listed because they are the supply that could enter this market next. No credit quantity is shown for a bank that cannot sell.
In-lieu fee programs serving Montana
An in-lieu fee program sells the same regulatory outcome as a bank for an administrative fee. Federal rule ranks bank credits first (33 CFR 332.3(b)), so programs are listed here — after the bank sections — and never inside them.
1 further approved in-lieu fee program serves Montana but holds no credits here right now.
Active watersheds in Montana
The HUC-6 watersheds where Montana banks hold offerings, by number of offerings.
What mitigation credits cost in Montana
There is no published price for a mitigation bank credit in Montana, or anywhere else. Credits change hands in private bilateral deals with no disclosure requirement, and the federal registry has no price field — so any single “average price per credit” you find has been modeled, not measured. What can be documented is individual purchases, one public record at a time. That is what we do, state by state; Montana is not one we hold a verified transaction for yet. Published in-lieu fee rates
Montana mitigation banking regulation
Permits in Montana are issued by the Corps’ Omaha district, in the Northwestern Division. See our division overview for new-bank approval timelines, and recent permit and bank applications.
Montana mitigation banking — common questions
How much does wetland mitigation cost in Montana?
We do not publish a price for a Montana credit, and nobody else can honestly publish one either: credits are sold in private bilateral deals with no disclosure requirement, and the federal registry has no price field. What we hold is no verified Montana transaction on record yet — the counts are on this page and the records themselves are not published. What actually moves a credit's price — scarcity in the specific service area that covers your site, the credit class, the unit it is measured in and whether credits are already released — is set out on the credit-cost pillar.
Who issues wetland permits in Montana?
In Montana, wetland and stream impacts are permitted through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Omaha District. A mitigation bank's credits offset the impact once a permit requires compensation; being in the same state as a bank is not enough — the bank's approved service area must cover your site.
How many mitigation banks are in Montana?
We track 34 mitigation and conservation banks and in-lieu fee sites on record for Montana, of which 24 are approved. 19 are open-market banks and 14 are in-lieu fee sites whose credits can be bought; the rest are single-client captive banks excluded from the supply figures on this page.
Get a market analysis for any Montana watershed
No Montana watershed has a free market report on this site yet. A full analysis — supply bank by bank, sales pace, runway by credit class and pending entrants — can be ordered for any US watershed.
About the data on this page
Bank details, status and credit balances are mirrored from the USACE RIBITS registry, the federal public record for mitigation banks. Single-client banks are excluded from supply figures. What we call a “credit sale” is a credit withdrawal — the entry written in the federal credit ledger when credits are committed to a permit. At commercial banks a withdrawal generally represents a sale; at a single-client bank it offsets the sponsor’s own project. The figures count ledger transactions, not distinct purchases — one purchase may produce several withdrawals — and we count entries rather than credits moved, because credit classes are different units and cannot be added together. Sales are counted from the withdrawals in RIBITS’s own credit ledger over the last 10 complete years. They are counts of transactions, never sums of credits, for the same reason totals are kept per class. Each bar in a sales chart counts the credit sales recorded in that calendar year — withdrawals from the federal ledger, not quantities of credits. The final bar is the year in progress and is shown in a different color. No bars means no sales in those years.
RIBITS provides credit type and credit classification for each bank listing which we display verbatim. The topic labels and headings you see are ours — we group those names so you can more easily find what you need. For example, five banks selling the same kind of wetland credit may record their classification as “Palustrine Forested”, “PFO - Palustrine Forested”, “Forested Wetland”, “Forested Wetlands” or just “Forested”; we gather all five under one Forested label. Watershed groupings come from each bank’s service area intersected with the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. We group at the HUC-6 level because it is the scale at which these patterns are legible: a HUC-8 is sub-regional and usually too small, while a HUC-4 is large enough to average away the local dynamics that decide whether credits are available where you need them. Those links are refreshed monthly rather than nightly, because service areas and watershed boundaries don’t change frequently.
Comps are documented purchases, confirmed against the RIBITS ledger where the transaction can be matched.