This graphic of a tributary to the Eel River shows the intense marijuana cultivation typical of many drainages in California’s Emerald Triangle. The large red circles indicate outdoor grows of more than 100 plants and the pot farms in this drainage alone require more than 15 million gallons of water per growing season. By Matt…
Editor’s note: TU sent a handful of college students to the Pacific Northwest for this year’s TU Costa 5 Rivers Odyssey to study and fish in the Columbia River basin. On the road to Cougar Dam in Blue River, Ore., there is a dirt road in Willamette National Forest that leads you to a squiggly hand-drawn “Road…
With a pump of their fists and a tip of their caps, Colorado sportsmen and women are celebrating another successful step toward protecting some 400,000 acres of prime public lands and commending the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources for advancing the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act out of committee this week. The legislation introduced by Colorado…
By Harv Forsgren Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune as an opinion piece in March of 2019. In Utah about half of our national forests — over 4 million acres — are designated as “inventoried roadless areas.” When a 2001 federal rule was being drafted to guide management of roadless…
By Christine Peterson Fly fishing keeps Heidi Lewis’ life in order. And fly fishing for her depends on roadless areas. The Wisconsin native moved to Utah more than 20 years ago for the outdoor recreation that has kept her there. She and her husband own a business now – an architecture steel company – and…
Theodore Roosevelt defined conservation as the application of common sense to common problems for the common good. For 15 years, Trout Unlimited has educated, organized and mobilized sportsmen and women to apply that definition to public lands across the West. When energy development, for example, threatened the iconic Wyoming Range and its three species of…
Land acquisition, conversion to regional park land, dedication of irrigation water to the Carmel River The Carmel River on California’s central coast is a native steelhead stronghold, but dams and a steady increase in diversions and pumping have contributed to a drastic decline in adult steelhead returns. Recently, two of three dams on this river…
