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Working with nature
America has such a well-earned reputation for innovating our way out of problems that we sometimes miss the obvious natural solution. In a series of open houses this summer in Great Basin communities, the Trump administration revealed a plan to reduce wildfire risk by constructing 11,000 acres of fuel breaks across public lands in parts…
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“Live the Stream” – Meet Joe Humphreys
“Schedule it when I'm not around.” Meigan and Lucas Bell pestered me for weeks to host a showing of Live the Stream in the national office of Trout Unlimited. I am glad my assistant didn’t listen to my direction. Live the Stream is a fantastic movie. Its cinematography captures the essence of the “quiet sport.”…
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Progress on the back 40
Download the Western Water and Habitat Program's 20 year report The great conservationist, Aldo Leopold, once wrote that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell…
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Fishing matters
City Catch kids in Baltimore. Lately, when I am in town, I’ve taken to starting my mornings at Fletchers boathouse. I’ll row up or downstream for an hour with a strung fly rod. If I see a suspended gar, or a rolling carp, I’ll stop and cast. Even with the outing, I am at the…
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Spend time with the future
Hunter and Alliegh getting it done Every year Trout Unlimited brings together 20-30 teenagers from all over the country for a teen summit. They are mostly veterans of TU youth camps. This year’s group met at Georgetown Lake in Montana. It is not a one-and-done experience for them. After the summit, they commit to serving…
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Restore the core
The Rock Creek watershed It looks like an out-of-place slip-and-slide placed into a meadow alongside a tributary of Rock Creek. It is, in fact, a fish screen. Like so many western trout streams, Rock Creek and its tributaries are important sources of irrigation for farmers and ranchers. In the past, many irrigators would dam a…
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Protecting the Rubies
Theodore Roosevelt defined conservation as the application of common sense to common problems for the common good. For 15 years, Trout Unlimited has educated, organized and mobilized sportsmen and women to apply that definition to public lands across the West. When energy development, for example, threatened the iconic Wyoming Range and its three species of…
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