Category

Restoration | Page 9

  • Restoration From the field

    Working together for the gold: Meadow restoration in Golden Trout country

    For the California Golden Trout, even minor levels of meadow degradation have big impacts on resident populations.

    Mountain meadows serve as a key habitat for many inland native trout species across the West. Unfortunately for California’s inland trout populations, some sixty percent of meadow habitat in the Sierra Nevada—home to eight distinct native trout species—is considered impaired.  For the California Golden Trout, whose native range sits above 7,500 feet in elevation and…

  • Restoration From the field

    Colorado greenbacks are … back

    After more than a decade of work, the greenback cutthroat trout is now reproducing in its native range Seven years ago, on a cool mid-September morning, I joined other Colorado Trout Unlimited members and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) staff at a 10,000-foot trailhead to Herman Gulch, a stream located in Arapaho National Forest west of…

  • Restoration

    Moving fish before the machinery arrives

    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…

  • Restoration

    A beautiful mess

    Loading streams with wood may make the fishing tougher, but it’s great for trout. “Why do they keep putting trees in our stream!?”  In the Northeast, where I work, this is a question we have been hearing a lot over the past couple of years, often with a sense of sadness or irritation in the…