Doubled up: TU wins Forest Service award twice in one year

By Sam Davidson

 

One of the most gratifying things about stream restoration work for trout and salmon is you can readily see the results.

Which is to say, this work—and the fishing opportunities that follow—is its own reward.

Still, it’s good

when your efforts get acknowledged by a broader audience. And last week, TU’s stream restoration work in two states, California and Colorado, earned a national award from the U.S. Forest Service.

The agency awarded the 2015 Rise to the Future award to two TU field staff: Dave Lass, California Field Director, and Brian Hodge, Yampa/White Basin Project Coordinator.

Lass was honored for the category of Aquatic Recreational Accomplishment. For details on Hodge’s award and his outstanding efforts, click here.

In honoring Lass and Deborah Urich of the Tahoe National Forest for their roles in the Little Truckee River Fish Habitat Improvement Project, the Forest Service said, “Between 2012 and 2015, Deborah and David worked with a number of partners to raise $550,000 to improve aquatic habitat on the Little Truckee River. This interdisciplinary effort involved more than a dozen partners that included the Bureau of Reclamation, the Little Truckee Watershed Council and local Trout Unlimited chapter that protected sensitive archeology sites and rare and threatened plants and fish, created a volunteer agreement to manage unauthorized off-highway vehicle use, and mobilized three volunteer work days on this highly popular recreational fishery.”

The Little Truckee, or “LT,” is the largest tributary to the Truckee River downstream of Lake Tahoe and is a famously technical wild trout fishery. The project had four specific goals: improve habitat for all life stages of wild trout; disperse recreational use and improve the angling experience; encourage public engagement in watershed restoration through volunteerism; and sustain the region’s angling-related economy.

Over the past two years, Lass organized several volunteer work days on the LT, planting willows and using a bucket brigade to place gravel in the streambed to foster spawning. Then, in August and September of 2015, bulldozers, trucks and excavators completed the final phase of the project, installing trees, boulders, willows and more gravels.

Within a few days, trout were occupying the new-and-improved habitat. Two videos commissioned by Lass highlighted the before-and-after character of the project reach. And the fishing? Still world class. In a few years, expect more and bigger fish—all wild—in many more spots, on the LT.
 

Lass and the Tahoe Trout Bums of the Truckee River TU chapter didn’t undertake the LT habitat improvement project for accolades—they did it for the fish, and for their fellow anglers. The Rise to the Future award is a nice reminder that sometimes, when you do something good, the outcomes resonate further afield than you expected.

 

Sam Davidson is California Communications Director for Trout Unlimited. Regrettably, he lives a half-day's drive from the LT.