Trout Unlimited believes that conservation work begins with people. This belief was affirmed again when over 75 volunteers gathered recently to renew one of the Lake Tahoe region’s most popular places—Squaw Valley—and begin the process of restoring its namesake stream to a more natural state. Squaw Creek is that stream. Once home to native Lahontan cutthroat trout, it is now the focus of a partnership-driven restoration project with TU at its heart. Read full story
Ten years ago, on a river revered for its huge wild steelhead, more than a ton of dynamite reduced a 47-foot high dam to rubble. At the time, it was the largest dam ever removed in the United States. It was also the first dam to be removed without first removing entrained silt. The operation was a success in removing the silt within a few days and long term return of steelhead.
As with subsequent dam removal projects on rivers such as the Penobscot, Elwha and Carmel, it didn’t take long for migratory fishes such as salmon and steelhead to begin moving into the upper reaches of the Sandy River, habitat they hadn’t reached for more than a century.
But would taking out the dam lead to a real boost in anadromous fish numbers in the system? This October, in a 10-year retrospective, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife looked at the numbers and offered the answer: an “unqualified yes.” The action was also revealing in that all of the silt was removed in days with the river returning to normalcy.
Dams installed last year survived the severe winter and seasonal runoff with minimum damage. Dams were reported to be over topped with water during the spring. They were effective in retaining water in the meadow and sustained minimal damage.
The meadow appears very healthful after this winter. Grass has grown taller and more dense and filled many of the open channels seen last year. Vegetative growth and downfall is plentiful this year.
The project will continue to retain water in the meadow and correct the down cutting experienced in the last 60 years. Replacement of a culvert under the access road is a major item of future work.
Jann Williams, John Sikora, Bill Burden, Pat Barron and Stan Backlund participated in the work.
The Eel River is on the brink of disaster, its ocean-going fish species threatened with extinction, its nurturing estuary diked, drained and diminishing.
At the same time, this massive watershed in California’s northwest corner offers the state’s best hope of ensuring a future abundance of wild anadromous fish.
This paradox of the Eel, California’s third largest river system, is driving an urgency to save it while there’s still time. For the Eel’s diverse and often adversarial stakeholders, this is a rare and fleeting opportunity to set aside differences out of a common commitment to what they share.
To ensure these fish endure, with the added dimension of a changing climate, we must take strong steps. Salmon need help in the stream gravel where they hatch, the pools and floodplains where they grow, the Delta channels that carry them to the ocean, and the rivers they power up in order to spawn and die in the same gravel from which they emerged.
In 2006, the Pajaro River on California’s central coast came out of obscurity to make national headlines—for the wrong reason: it was named the most endangered river in America.
Historically, the Pajaro was one of the most productive steelhead streams in this region. Old-timers in Watsonville and other local communities recall chromers stacked like cordwood in the holding water as they came in after winter storms blew open the sandbars at the river mouths.
But water diversions, widespread habitat loss and degradation, and drought reduced this river’s once robust run of wild steelhead to a shadow of its former self.
Local fish advocates, led by the indefatigable Herman Garcia and his group Coastal Habitat Education and Environmental Restoration (CHEER), sprang into action. By 2006, Garcia and CHEER already had been working for a decade to keep the Pajaro’s dwindling steelhead run alive, through fish rescues and work with landowners to restore aquatic and riparian habitat. Read the Full Story
Yeti Presents: Kamchatka Steelhead Project is a film from Felt Soul Media and Yeti Coolers about what happens when you enlist fly-fishermen to help on a scientific quest to study and preserve one of the world's last great steelhead populations. As Grayson Schaffer reported in the August Issue of Outside, the Kamchatka Steelhead Project is a U.S.-Russia partnership that monitors the steelhead population through catch and release fishing, and over its lifetime has produced an incredible body of research on the fish in their native habitat. Watch to get a sense of why the area and the fish are so special, and worth saving. View the Film
On July 15, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources passed a bill, H.R. 3650 that would allow the disposal of 2 million acres of Forest Service land per state. This is an area larger than the Gallatin National Forest in Montana. More than all National Forest lands in Wisconsin. Greater than the National Forests of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York and Pennsylvania combined. This is twice the size of California's Six Rivers National Forest.
Two million acres of your National Forests per state – gone.
Certain lands, such as Congressionally designated Wilderness Areas, would be excluded, but the majority of America's public lands managed by the Forest Service would be eligible for liquidation.
And what would happen to these lands? They would go to individual states to be managed primarily for timber production without any consideration given to the 320 million Americans who currently own a stake in them. That is, if the lands aren't sold to private interests, like what is happening right now with the Elliot State Forest in Oregon.
A new video from Trout Unlimited shows that, despite the river’s many challenges, the potential for successful habitat restoration in the Pajaro is strong. That’s because in 2009 TU, CHEER, and the Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration (CEMAR) teamed up to “think big and start small” in restoring steelhead habitat in the Pajaro.
The California Division of Fish and Wildlife has recognized the benefits of Beaver in the waters of California. Beaver dams create habitat for many other animals and plants of California. Deer and elk frequent beaver ponds to forage on shrubby plants that grow where beavers cut down trees. Weasels, raccoons, and herons hunt frogs and other prey along the marshy edges of beaver ponds. Sensitive species such as red-legged, yellow-legged and Cascade frogs all benefit from habitat created by beaver wetlands. In coastal rivers and streams, young coho salmon and steelhead may use beaver ponds to find food and protection from high flows and predators while waiting to grow big enough to go out to sea.
Beaver activities can cause problems, but before beginning a beaver control action, assess the problem and match the most appropriate and cost-effective controls to the situation. There are two basic control methods used in California: prevention and lethal control. It is almost impossible as well as cost prohibitive to exclude beavers from ponds, lakes, or impoundments.
See the CA DFW WebSite.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Commerce, PacificCorp, and the states of Oregon and California today signed an agreement that, following a process administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is expected to remove four dams on the Klamath River by 2020, amounting to one of the largest river restoration efforts in the nation.
State and federal officials also signed a new, separate agreement with irrigation interests and other parties known as the 2016 Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement (KPFA). This agreement will help Klamath Basin irrigators avoid potentially adverse financial and regulatory impacts associated with the return of fish runs to the Upper Klamath Basin, which are anticipated after dams are removed.