Currently browsing… Priority Waters
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Dams out: Maine’s Frost Gully Brook runs free again
In Freeport, Maine the rescue mission was launched with a single word. “Trout!” The operation was anticipated. Construction crews had just an hour prior knocked down a small dam on a tiny stream cutting through Freeport, Maine. As water rushed through the newly formed breach — with a pump aiding the pond-draining effort — the…
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Green Thumbs for Salmon and Steelhead
TU volunteers remove invasive weeds at a restoration site in Washington’s Chehalis River Basin On a sunny Saturday morning in early June, a group of TU staff and volunteers gathered at Camp Creek, a tributary of Washington’s Chehalis River, to help TU’s Alex Gustafson remove Spotted Jewelweed from riparian habitat at the site of a…
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What’s going on in the Great Salt Lake?
Making sense of the doomsday scenarios, donations and what role TU is playing in this important watershed. With recent headlines predicting a dire future for the Great Salt Lake due to the extended drought and climate change, many are wondering what got us here and if there is any hope to restore one of Utah’s…
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Partners Building Fire Resilience with the Forest Service in Washington
USFS Chief Moore gets a firsthand look at TU restoration work in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in North Central Washington are one of the epicenters for catastrophic fire risk in the Western United States. Climate change, tree disease and over a century of forest mismanagement are to blame.…
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How to bring a river back from the dead
One chapter’s handiwork (literally) has salter brook trout returning to a famous creek The Quashnet is a five-mile prayer of a river that flows into Waquoit Bay in Cape Cod, Mass. Fishing the river is like walking in a verdant tunnel, as wide as a fly rod is long in many sections. Willows and other…
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Technology Busts Barrier Hunting
Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data is helping TU’s restoration teams work more efficiently and effectively. Removing barriers to fish passage is a big part of Trout Unlimited’s work across the country, but you might be amazed to learn how complicated finding culverts or low-head dams can be. For years, TU staff has been heading…
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A Fishery Lacking Fish
Brook trout habitat will expand once abandoned mine drainage (AMD) cleanup takes place on Beech Creek in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s Beech Creek winds its way through rugged hills that echo with the bugles of wild elk in the fall and thunder with the gobbles of turkeys in the spring. A mid-sized freestone stream lined with hemlock,…