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Conservation | Page 55

  • Advocacy Featured

    United by Hope: Bristol Bay dialogues

    A month from winter solstice, Dillingham, Alaska – where the Nushagak River dumps into Bristol Bay – was dark, quiet, and chilly last November. Snow and wind blew across the surrounding tundra not far from her windows when texts started flooding into Alannah Hurley’s phone. The news: A major permit for the proposed Pebble mine…

  • Conservation Government Affairs

    Congress needs to act on climate change to protect fishing, outdoor economy

    As I drove down to the river access, I couldn’t help but notice the expanse of sun-bleached stones signifying lower-than-usual flows.

    My dog, Cooper, gave me a plaintive stare as I loaded up the truck on a chilly May morning, the dawn light just beginning to break over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Normally my German shorthaired pointer is a fixture on all my fishing trips, but on that day I was planning to wade the…

  • American Places Featured

    Muscle memory on the Green River

    It had been 10 years since I’d held a paddle.   My previous canoeing experience had consisted of gliding across the glassy lakes of the Sierra Nevada. And while Lake Tahoe and Lake Lahontan could become treacherous in a storm, they did not represent the intrinsic peril of the swift, boney river onto which I was about to embark.   There have been many times in my…

  • Public Lands Featured

    Whittlesey Creek National Wildlife Refuge gives hope to coaster brook trout

    For two decades, Whittlesey Creek National Wildlife Refuge has been the site of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service efforts to restore self-sustaining populations of coaster book trout. Trout Unlimited has been a partner in the work. The efforts haven't been successful, but have increased knowledge about this unique form of brook trout and what could be needed to restore the fish to Lake Superior tributaries.

    Of the many forms of brook trout, one of the more unique is the coaster.  Coasters are potamodromous, spending much of their adult lives in nearshore waters of the upper Great Lakes and then migrating into streams to spawn. They can grow to larger sizes than brookies that live their entire lives in streams, and…