Trout Unlimited is no stranger to tackling ambitious restoration projects that stand to enhance cold water habitat resilience and bolster those trout species. Recently, TU undertook one of those projects in California’s Sierra Nevada backcountry to restore high quality golden trout habitat and inject some much needed resilience from worsening environmental conditions. While this native species has declined due to decades of habitat loss, hybridization, and climate change, there is renewed hope for Californian golden trout.
TU recently shared a new video highlighting this ambitious work and what should be a success story we can all celebrate. Thanks to partnerships with the U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Anabranch Solutions and others, Sierra Nevada golden trout will soon have access to high-quality, restored cold water habitats that are resilient to the mounting environmental stressors.
The project will restore some 75 stream miles and 7,000 acres of high quality habitat for the struggling golden trout–their only chance at recovery. So far, TU has restored 2,000 acres of critical golden trout habitat. TU and partners plan to accomplish this feat through a variety of cold-water habitat restoration practices, such as installing low-tech, process-based restoration structures (such as beaver dam analogs and post-assisted log structures) to increase pool availability and habitat complexity, while improving water temperatures and instream flows. While these structures may seem low-tech, the complexities of working in the backcountry environment and packing equipment in should not go unnoticed.
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For more on the Golden Trout Project and TU’s work, be sure to check out this LINK. Kudos as always to the TU team for their tireless work supporting our cold-water fisheries and sharing these exemplary efforts with all of us.
