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The True Cast – Wildfire
I hiked up to the top of the road where I live and paused to stare southward toward a plume of black smoke about 25 miles away. Another wildfire. Sure, wildfire is often a natural occurrence. It’s part of living in the West. The Southeast has its hurricanes. Tornado Alley has twisters. Seems like in…
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Drought, wildfires and our work
These are the dog days of summer.
These are the dog days of summer. A stretch of continued hot weather and low precipitation left communities on the Front Range of Colorado, where I’m writing from, threatened by several wildfires that popped up at the end of July. These fires are a vivid reminder of what others across the 11-state western region are…
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Partners Building Fire Resilience with the Forest Service in Washington
USFS Chief Moore gets a firsthand look at TU restoration work in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in North Central Washington are one of the epicenters for catastrophic fire risk in the Western United States. Climate change, tree disease and over a century of forest mismanagement are to blame.…
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Fish and fire in the West
In June 2013, researcher and fisheries biologist Ashley Rust and her family were at their family cabin near Creede, Colo., when an afternoon rainstorm—a frequent occurrence in the San Juans at that time of year—worked through the area. The system brought little in the way of rain but contained lightning all the same, andover the…
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Behind the Cover: The fire issue of TROUT Magazine
Wildfire and its impact on our rivers and the places we all call our home waters is a heavy topic. One that doesn’t often need any further description. Like most issues of TROUT Magazine, this one started with a subtle theme. Fire and what that might mean for us as anglers and conservationists. It’s pretty…
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North Umpqua fire changes complexion of an iconic river
We stopped first at Swiftwater Park. My brother, Greg, and I always start there when we fish the North Umpqua searching for summer steelhead. It’s not much of a park, really. Just some parking next to the river, along with his and her’s vault toilets. The river is the attraction. This is the final upstream spot before reaching the North’s famous fly-only water. We…
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TU staffers turn 2020’s Oregon wildfires into opportunity to improve resiliency
People all around Oregon woke on Sept. 8, 2020, to high winds, extensive power outages and lots of speculation by foresters that it could be the worst day of fires in Oregon’s history. That’s exactly what it turned out to be for Chrysten Lambert, TU’s Oregon director for Western Conservation, and many others when three wildfires whipped through the area in a split second…
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