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Big protection for small streams
Happily, this week, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez found Trout Unlimited’s arguments compelling and declared that the 2020 rule was illegal and “would cause serious environmental harm.”
The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps made a curious admission in 2020. They announced they were removing the protections of the Clean Water Act for ephemeral streams, which only flow in response to rainfall. They then said they were unable to determine the potential effects of this dramatic change. The chief of…
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“Equitable treatment” for wild salmon and steelhead
A 41-year-old promise is yet to be met in the Columbia River basin Back in 1980, Congress promised that salmon and steelhead would receive “equitable treatment” with the operation of the Columbia River basin hydropower system. What we are seeing today is far from “equitable.” The fact that wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake…
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Paying it forward in New Mexico
I want to share a quintessential Trout Unlimited story...
I want to share a quintessential Trout Unlimited story. Last week, I was virtually testifying before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee on a mundanely named, but important, bill called the Legacy Roads and Trails Act. As usual, the government affairs team had me well prepared to advocate for a bill that would…
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Guaranteed: they will come back
Pacific salmon and steelhead connect the Pacific Ocean to the Sawtooth mountains and persist at 1-2 percent of their historic numbers. Their decline precisely parallels the construction of the four lower Snake River dams
Editor’s note: This is the sixth and final installment in a series of articles showing that removing four dams on the lower Snake River is the last, best hope for wild Snake River salmon and steelhead. Wild Snake River salmon and steelhead are on the brink of extinction, but we can bring these incredible fish…
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Trout in the classroom creates advocates
“You committed to driving to Maryland tomorrow for a Trout in the Classroom release.” My colleague's words were not music to my ears. I had completely forgotten, and wasn’t really thrilled about the outing. I drove the few hours to the Lucy School in Middletown, Md., with relatively low expectations. If you have seen one Trout in the Classroom release, and…
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Chasing wild trout on Pennsylvania’s storied Spring Creek
The famous Spring Creek, Pennsylvania. Derek Eberly photo. Beware the first-cast fish ... it's almost never a good omen Many years ago, I was fishing on the Shenandoah with my friends Mike Dombeck and Bruce Babbitt, who had just stepped down as the director of the Bureau of Land Management and secretary of Interior, respectively.…
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The tipping point for salmon and steelhead
These remarks were delivered yesterday at the 2021 Environmental Conference at the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University. I want to begin my remarks today by talking about SARs—not the viral respiratory disease, but the percentage of juvenile salmon or smolts that survive the ocean, and their trek through the dams, and return to spawn. Experts call this the “smolt to adult…
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