The Blue Mountain and Idaho Batholith Ecoregions in NE Oregon and SW Washington provides habitat for numerous threatened and endangered trout and salmon. Trout Unlimited (TU) focuses our work on four of its most critical river basins – the John Day, Umatilla, Grande Ronde, and Clearwater. Each of these watersheds is a stronghold for resident and anadromous salmonids. Wild steelhead (threatened), spring Chinook (endangered), coho (threatened), bull trout (threatened), pacific lamprey, and redband trout inhabit these watersheds. These native fishes are struggling for survival due to a range of limiting factors that includes water diversions, passage barriers and levees, degraded habitat, degraded riparian areas, and non-native species competition. TU’s work in the basin includes improving instream flows to provide cold-water refugia, protecting and restoring critical riparian and in-stream habitats, and removing fish passage barriers.
