Trout Unlimited works with whoever is at the controls of the White House, agency, House, Senate, or committee leadership. Demonstrating the point: our tireless advocacy efforts helped persuade the last administration to deny a key permit for the Pebble Mine in Alaska and to sign the Great American Outdoors Act into law
“It is our collective opinion, based on overwhelming scientific evidence, that restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake River is essential to recovering wild Pacific salmon and steelhead in the basin.” So reads a remarkable letter recently sent to the governors of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana by 10 of the finest and most-respected salmon and steelhead scientists in … Read more
Wednesday afternoon, a day that America won’t soon forget, I was on a phone call just across the river in Trout Unlimited’s Arlington, Va., headquarters. A group of us at TU were talking about recovering Snake River salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest when my phone began blaring with a message from the mayor of Washington, D.C. In response to the attacks on the Capitol, she was ordering a city-wide curfew in three hours. TU staff and volunteers regularly go … Read more
I recently read an essay where a priest on a mission to Guatemala discovered that artists from the village painted museum-quality artwork on the inside walls of a bell-tower—a place where only pigeons would see them. The story reminded me of Trout Unlimited’s work—behind the scenes, often unnoticed, complicated, hard, and, ultimately, beautiful. What a year. We reckoned with racial injustice as a nation, and looked inward to the fact that we need to become … Read more
I first met Jim Greene as a relatively new employee of Trout Unlimited. He was an incredibly energetic earnest, and gregarious man
The light smoke in Washington, D.C., signaled devastation in the West. In California, for example, at least 26 people have perished from wildfire, and more than 7,000 structures were destroyed. In Oregon, the Almeda fire, alone, destroyed nearly 2,400 homes and killed at least three people, with more missing
If you want to get normally serene trout anglers wound up, just wade into the “hatchery vs. wild/native” debate. I know of at least three organizations that were formed because of disagreements with Trout Unlimited chapters over hatchery and wild fish
September is Public Lands Month, and few places are more important to trout and salmon than our public lands. Half of all the blue-ribbon trout streams in the West, for example, flow across public lands. Our public lands are often the last and best strongholds for many species of native trout and char. My exposure … Read more
Born in Colorado, the mighty Colorado River serves over 40 million people and irrigates nearly 5 million acres of farmland before it enters Mexico. It is the hardest-working river in the West. The river also provides some of the finest trout fishing in the country and attracts millions of dollars in associated outdoor-related revenue to local communities.