Currently browsing… Priority Waters
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In search of national monument designation
Dan Johnson is an amiable bear of a man with an ursine nose for finding things. We were on a mission to find one of the sources of California’s largest spring creek, the Fall River. Yes, that Fall River. The one whose unique chemistry produces huge volumes of macroinvertebrates, dense hatches of midges, mayflies and…
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NOAA announces $16.6 million for TU salmon and steelhead fish passage projects
TU projects in Alaska, Oregon and Washington Priority Waters recommended for a new round of federal infrastructure funding Salmon, steelhead and trout need access to cold, clean water and intact spawning and rearing habitat if they are to sustain and recover their populations in the face of the changing climate. This week, the National Oceanic…
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The Elwha River: A wild ride through a decade of dam removal
A connected river is good for nature, period. And because we are a part of and depend on nature, it is good for humanity too.
John R. McMillan, Science Director, The Conservation Angler All photos provided by John McMillan “The river will never recover!” This is one of the responses I've seen in recent months from skeptics of the historic dam removal project currently underway on the Klamath River – the largest such project ever to date. This claim is…
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Bringing the salmon home
On the border of Oregon and California, the largest dam removal ever attempted, anywhere on the planet, is underway on the Klamath River.
When the dams come out, the Klamath will come back. May 2024: The Klamath River dam removal is well underway. The smallest of the four dams to be removed, Copco 2, is already gone. The reservoirs behind the three remaining dams – Copco 1, Iron Gate, and JC Boyle – were drained this winter and…
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Celebrating a dream come true in North Carolina
There was abundant sunshine, bluegrass, barbeque and 300 fly fishing enthusiasts that gathered to celebrate the grand opening of one of the nicest fly shops you’ll ever see—and the only one I’ve ever seen with a built-in bar—the new Brookings Fly Shop in Cashiers, N.C. If you’re reading this, then you are probably one of…
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Watch: “Reviving the Bear”
Once thought genetically extinct, this native trout is on the path to recovery They call the Bear a “working river.” Covering more than 500 miles and tracing a broad horseshoe on its journey to the Great Salt Lake, the river connects rural ranching communities in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. Its heavily controlled flows are interrupted…
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There’s hope for endangered salmon and steelhead
TU’s sticktuitiveness at work on a Priority Water in California A few years ago, the president of the Trout Unlimited Golden Gate Chapter took me to a creek called Devil’s Gulch—a tributary of Lagunitas Creek, an important salmon and steelhead river in California that is one of TU’s Priority Waters. Mike Cronin proudly showed off…