Before the boating season gets into full swing, the League to Save Lake Tahoe (or Keep Tahoe Blue) hosted an all-encompassing training course for the people working where the public meets the lake – at marinas and boat ramps – so key information about aquatic invasive species can be shared.
Salmon can now access 4 times more spawning area than they have for decades.
Since the 1930’s, a water-diversion dam about two miles east of downtown Lincoln has been a major problem for the salmon that swim up Auburn Ravine to spawn every fall and winter. In wet years, on average, 7 to 10 percent were able to get over that dam to reach good spawning areas upstream. In dryer years, none made it.
It was called the Hemphill Dam – probably named after a prominent Lincoln resident, Wallace Hemphill, who led various irrigation projects in the area around Lincoln in the 1920’s and 30’s.
The good news is that this dam has been removed. The site is now called the Hemphill Fish Passage Project. The salmon now have access to about eight miles of streambed. And they are using it!
Read More with HemphillDam.pdf
GMO aquaculture plant regularly:
Regularly discharges high levels of ammonia into the surrounding watershed and violates environmental regulations;
Keeps its GE fish growing in toxicological water contaminated with unsafe levels of fiberglass particles, ammonia, and decaying corpses of the GE fish who could not survive such inhumane conditions;
Has had instances of aerosolized hydrochloric acid contaminating the facility along with improper handling of other caustic chemicals and disregarding basic worker safety;
Has routine containment breaches and disposes of their mortalities in easily accessible outdoor dumpsters where wild animals scavenge, risking potentially bringing GE fish into the nearby effluent.
AquaBounty’s behavior isn’t surprising. Their actions follow how Big Food companies operate in the U.S. food system; for-profit and at the cost of people and the environment. It is imperative to put the truth about AquaBounty practices in the light, as the impact of their product is of grave concern for water and wild Salmon - both life-giving elements in river and ocean ecosystems globally.
Stream restoration projects require a variety of tools and tactics. Sometimes you use a trowel, and sometimes a bulldozer.
In trout and salmon streams where water quality or habitat are highly degraded, you are more likely to need the latter. But when you bring in the heavy machinery, what happens to the fish living in that section of the stream?
Often, the project manager is required to relocate as many of the resident fish as is possible before the work begins. The goal is to cause as little harm as possible to the fish and to ensure that none remain in a stream channel that has had its flow diverted, as was recently necessary for the Faith Valley Restoration Project.
As holiday visitors vacated the Stanislaus National Forest at the conclusion of the long Fourth of July weekend, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Heritage and Wild Trout Program moved in.
Four team members from the statewide program – Environmental Scientist Allison Scott, scientific aids Aaron Sturtevant and Stew Sloan, along with new program leader Farhat Bajjaliya – set up camp within the border region of Alpine and Stanislaus counties in the northern reaches of the Eastern Sierra.
Work on the Calf Pasture Meadow Restoration Project began on Wednesday, August 31st and will continue for 4 to 5 weeks to restore approximately 30 acres of degraded meadow habitat. Calf Pasture is located in the Van Vleck and Tells Creek area on the Pacific Ranger District and was acquired by the Eldorado National Forest in 1984. The meadow is highly degraded due to the effects of intensive logging and grazing dating back to the 1800s and from trail incision along the Red Peak Trail.
"Partnerships with American Rivers, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, along with help from a number of volunteer organizations are making it possible to get this important restoration work done," said Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais.
The project goals include:
-Restoring approximately 30 acres of degraded meadow habitat to benefit aquatic- and meadow-dependent species.
-Increasing water storage capacity and restoring meadow-floodplain connectivity.
-Reducing stream water temperature and increasing stream base flows and moderating peak flows.
-Reducing conifer encroachment in the meadow.
The Lahontan National Fish Hatchery Complex in Gardnerville, Nev., began stocking 100,000 catchable, Lahontan cutthroat trout into Lake Tahoe June 1 and will continue stocking throughout the summer as conditions allow.
The stocking is part of a multiagency and tribal cooperative effort to reintroduce the Tahoe Basin’s native trout species and expand recreational fishing opportunities to anglers. The partners involved are the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (USDA LTBMU), Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California.
The Truckee River, altered and damaged by well-meaning people decades ago, is being restored to something more closely mirroring nature’s intent. Conservationists have spent millions restoring miles of the lower river downstream of Reno. They have cut new meanders into the river channel, allowing nourishing floodwaters to spill naturally over the land. Wetlands and riverside forests are being cultivated and fish and wildlife flourish once again.
Another success story lies with Nevada’s state fish, the Lahontan cutthroat trout. Decades of work by biologists are paying off in a promising way, with the fish now spawning naturally up the river from Pyramid Lake for the first time in nearly 80 years.
California anglers looking to target the native but elusive Lahontan cutthroat trout may want to put Echo Lake in El Dorado County on their summer itinerary.
For the past several years, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has managed the deep blue waters of Echo Lake exclusively as a Lahontan cutthroat trout sport fishery.
The greater Sierra Nevada region is the source of more than 60 percent of California's developed water supply. It also encompasses a rich variety of natural areas, supporting 50 percent of California’s plant species and 60 percent of the state’s animal species. Sierra meadows cover less than 2 percent of the overall Sierra-Cascade landscape, but they are biological hotspots that sustain the headwaters of several major California water sources.
Trout Unlimited is partnered with California Trout and others in the Sierra Meadows partnership. In 2016— in the Sierra Meadows Partnership—The Sierra Meadows Strategy for restoring and protecting our state’s Sierra Nevada meadows was officially released in 2016 after two years of rigorous scientific study by the partners. A key piece of CalTrout's source-waters-to-sea approach to combatting the effects of drought and climate change, this strategy developed among a broad coalition of conservation partners aims to restore and conserve meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada, protecting a major source of our state’s water supply and critical habitats to fish and other species. Read More
Photo by Mike Wier
An investment analysis that looked at how much it would cost water users to build and operate the proposed Temperance Flat Dam northeast of Fresno without government funding was
finished earlier this year and quietly passed among water districts, which just as quietly asked the federal government to shelve work on the project. Read More