Welcome to the latest installment of the Wednesday Wake-Up Call, a roundup of the most pressing conservation issues important to anglers. Working with our friends at Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, The Everglades Foundation, Captains for Clean Water, VoteWater.org, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, and Conservation Hawks (among others), we’ll make sure you’ve got the information you need to understand the issues and form solid opinions.
1. The Klamath Runs Free, for the First Time in a Century
The fourth and final dam on Washington’s Klamath River has been breached, allowing the river to run free:
This week, the crew breached the small coffer dams that routed the river around the worksites at Copco 1 and Iron Gate. The Klamath River is now running free from the ocean up past the former PacifiCorp dams and into Oregon for the first time since 1911. After some remaining clean-up work, Kiewit, the contractor working with the KRRC, will be off the sites in weeks.
Breaching the coffer dams released more sediment downstream and those impacts will be carefully monitored. Aside from some short-term and geographically limited impacts from reservoir drawdown this winter, water quality in the river has remained good enough for human contact and salmon and steelhead all year. Scientists expect the negative effect of the coffer dam breaches to be much less intense, and over an even shorter time frame, than the previous drawdown.
Salmon and steelhead are in the river now. Recent monitoring reports show salmon have made their way as far as the middle Klamath. The first fish will almost certainly move past the former site of Iron Gate in the coming days.
Click here for the full story at tu.org
2. Apache Trout Removed from Endangered Species List
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland today announced that after more than five decades of recovery efforts by federal, state and Tribal partners, and with $5.1 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Apache trout is being removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife. The restoration of Arizona’s state fish marks the first sportfish and the first trout delisted due to recovery, a significant conservation success under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Secretary Haaland joined Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, White Mountain Apache Tribe Chairman Kasey Velesquez, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Siva Sundaresan and conservation partners at a celebration in Mesa, Arizona, to celebrate the restoration of the species.
“After more than 50 years of devoted efforts among federal, state, Tribal and non-governmental organizations, the incredible recovery of the Apache trout reminds us of the transformational power that collaborative conservation efforts – grounded in Indigenous Knowledge – can have on fish and wildlife,” said Secretary Haaland. “This recovery is a testament to the importance of the Endangered Species Act and its tools and resources that are allowing the Interior Department and the federal government to protect vital species in every corner of America.”