Conservation

The controversial Ambler Road project, proposed to bisect a portion of the Brooks Range in Alaska, has been rejected by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Ambler Road was proposed to be built across 3,000 streams home to grayling, arctic char, and sheefish, stretching for 211 miles west from Coldfoot, Alaska. The road would have been a private...

American Rivers, the conservation group that has worked to address problems with waterways in America for a half-century, released their 2024 report of the country's most endangered rivers. These rivers face a variety of problems, but common among them are pollution and habitat degradation. Of note is that each river in New Mexico makes the list, as does...

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) announced last week the implementation of a new program to track steelhead. According to the agency's website, "Biologists are putting satellite 'pop-off' tags on 10 adult winter steelhead in the Rogue and Chetco rivers this spring. The goal is to tag 'kelts' – the fish that already successfully spawned...

Ted Williams joined Tom Rosenbauer on the most recent episode of the Orvis podcast to talk about preserving native trout. Ted is a sometimes outspoken environmental writer, and recently wrote a series of stellar articles about glyphosate and native trout here at MidCurrent. The conversation Ted has with Tom centers around using rotenone to remove nonnative...

With the removal of dams along the Klamath River well underway, we've seen quite a few publications come out in opposition to the project. Chief among their concerns are the dead and dying animals that are struggling as the dam removal process send tons of sediment downriver. As Trout Unlimited points out in this recent blog post, though, the short-term...

The Government of Canada announced that the entirety of Kootenay National Park is closed to watercraft and all fishing, effective until March 31, 2025. The closure is to protect the waterbodies within Kootenay National Park from whirling disease, a parasite that impacts fish and is impossible to eradicate once established in a water system. The release from...

The Price River near Helper, Utah, received some much-needed attention from multiple conservation groups. The combined efforts of Trout Unlimited, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation, and Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative resulted in six dams being removed from the Price River as it flows through Helper. Removing the dams...

The Snake River Dams are in the news once again, and this time they're in the crosshairs of scientists from a group called Tell The Dam Truth (a bit on the nose, but I like it). Tell The Dam Truth just released a study that looks at claims about the clean energy produced by the Lower Snake River Dams - The Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and...

Regulators in California recently proposed a delay for new rules dictating how much water residents can use on their lawns, per The Independent. While areas of California have seen record rain and snowfall in recent years, the state has a scarcity of adequate water storage, and still faces critical water conservation issues in the areas that depend on...

We recently discussed the issues facing the Smith River here at MidCurrent, with the approval of a new dam on one of its most important tributaries. Tom Rosenbauer tackles this topic as well in his latest installment of the Orvis podcast. David Brooks, of Montana Trout Unlimited, joins Tom to fill anglers in on exactly what is threatened by the development...