Currently browsing… Priority Waters

  • Advocacy

    Five things anglers should know about the Antiquities Act

    1. The Antiquities Act authorizes the President of the United States to designate National Monuments on federal lands that contain historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, or other objects of historic, cultural or scientific interest. National monument designations can only take place on existing public lands. Landscape of Arizona's newest National Monument 2. Presidents have…

  • Advocacy

    In search of national monument designation

    Dan Johnson is an amiable bear of a man with an ursine nose for finding things. We were on a mission to find one of the sources of California’s largest spring creek, the Fall River. Yes, that Fall River. The one whose unique chemistry produces huge volumes of macroinvertebrates, dense hatches of midges, mayflies and…

  • Dam Removal

    The Elwha River: A wild ride through a decade of dam removal

    A connected river is good for nature, period. And because we are a part of and depend on nature, it is good for humanity too. 

    John R. McMillan, Science Director, The Conservation Angler All photos provided by John McMillan “The river will never recover!” This is one of the responses I've seen in recent months from skeptics of the historic dam removal project currently underway on the Klamath River – the largest such project ever to date.  This claim is…

  • Dam Removal

    Bringing the salmon home

    On the border of Oregon and California, the largest dam removal ever attempted, anywhere on the planet, is underway on the Klamath River.

    When the dams come out, the Klamath will come back. May 2024: The Klamath River dam removal is well underway. The smallest of the four dams to be removed, Copco 2, is already gone. The reservoirs behind the three remaining dams – Copco 1, Iron Gate, and JC Boyle – were drained this winter and…