Deer Creek Post-Fire Restoration Gets Blaine County Support

The Blaine County Commission has provided $465,000 from its Land, Water, and Wildlife Fund to assist with restoration of the Deer Creek drainage. About 70 percent of the drainage was ravaged by a lightning-sparked fire in August 2013. Severe rains immediately after the fire triggered debris flows and mudslides, clogging Deer Creek with sediment, shifting…

Short casts: Fish ladders don’t work, public lands support in CO, whirling disease in the Bow

John Day Dam on the Columbia River. A new Yale University study provides some daunting news for water and dam managers across the country: fish ladders aren’t the “fix-it” solution to fish migration over irrigation or hydroelectric dams. The study, which took place on three East Coast rivers—the Connecticut, the Susquehanna and the Merrimack—showed that…

Reconnecting trout and people in West Virginia

Replacing an undersized culvert with this bridge not only reduced flooding risks on a small tributary to the Capacon River in West Virginia, it reconnected 4.5 miles of native brook trout habitat. (Photo: Abby McQueen, TU stream restoration specialist) By Brooke Andrew The Trout Unlimited field staff in West Virginia are firm believers in our…

Big, wild, and coming back: California’s Eel River

Soda Creek, tributary to the upper Eel River. Large wood structure project directed by TU’s North Coast Coho Project. The Eel River is the beating heart of California’s “Lost Coast,” a swath of rugged country famous for its steelhead a nd salmon streams. Historically, the Eel was the third largest producer of salmon and steelhead…

Forest Service honors Home Rivers Initiative in East

By Mark Taylor Trout Unlimited doesn’t work to win awards. But that doesn’t mean it’s not great when recognition comes TU’s way. The U.S. Forest Service has honored TU’s Eastern Home Rivers initiative as the Volunteer and Service Award winner for the agency’s Region 9, in the Restoration category. Michael Owen, aquatic ecologist for the…

TU opposes bill allowing deadly sediment flows like one on the Shoshone River in 2016

Contacts: Tom Reed, President East Yellowstone Chapter of Trout Unlimited, 717-215-0241, TomReed1458@gmail.com Brett Prettyman, Intermountain Communications Director, Trout Unlimited, 801-209-5320, bprettyman@tu.org For Immediate Release Jan. 31, 2017 CHEYENNE, Wyo. Instead of working to prevent another massive 20-mile fish kill like one last fall on the Shoshone River, a Wyoming legislator has proposed a law requiring…

Rivers and roads: Connecting people … and fish

By Laura MacFarland A majority of Wisconsin’s 115 fish species, including trout, need to move throughout a watershed seasonally or at varying stages in their lifecycle to feed, find cooler water, avoid predators, and reach spawning habitat. Rivers, long and linear in nature, are vulnerable to habitat fragmentation thanks in part to our immense network…