TU Milestones
| TU Milestones
1959 – 1968 • TU National Board of Review prepared a brief advocating managing streams for wild trout. As a result, Michigan increased the number of catch and release streams. Michigan begins to cut back on stocking and increased funding for habitat improvement. • West Slope Chapter of TU, led by George Grant, brings to a halt Bureau of Reclamation plans to construct Reichle Dam saving 20 miles of Montana’s Big Hole River from inundation. TU supported listing of Apache and Gila trout and greenback and Pauite cutthroats as endangered species.
• National office moves from Michigan to Denver, Colo. Canadian anglers establish Trout Unlimited Canada. • Bureau of Reclamation’s planned Teton Dam near Newdale, Idaho, is vigorously protested by TU. But TU runs out of money, construction continues, and the dam fails on July 5, 1976 killing 14. TU wins case before U.S. Supreme Court blocking construction of Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River and spearheads a campaign to end planning for the Allenspur Dam which would have flooded 31 miles of the Yellowstone’s famed Paradise Valley. • TU and U. S. Department of Interior hold first Wild Trout Symposium in Yellowstone National Park. Operation Restore, predecessor to Embrace-A-Stream and designed to foster chapter-based conservation projects, is funded by a $50,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon foundation. Embrace-a-Stream, by the end of 2007, will have funded 800 projects and devote $8.4 million in cash and in-kind contributions to habitat restoration.
• Little Tennessee flooded after Sen. Howard Baker attached rider to fund completion of Tellico Dam to bill signed by President Jimmy Carter. TU joins battle against construction of Big A Dam at Ambejackmockmas Falls on the West Branch of the Penobscot, and Great Northern Paper drops plans for the dam in 1985. Two Forks Dam, which would have flooded 20 miles of the South Platte including the famed Gold Medal section, is defeated by coalition led by TU. • Wallop-Breaux Amendment to the Federal Aid to Sportfish Restoration Act supported by TU resulting in increased funding for state fishery programs. Pilot Colorado TU program expands into nation-wide partnership with U.S. Forest Service to improve fisheries on lands it controls. • Membership reaches 50,000 and national office moves to Washington, DC.
• Charles Gauvin becomes TU’s Executive Director, TU founder Griffith dies at 97, and membership passes 100,000. • The United Nations, under pressure from a number of conservation organizations including TU, bans indiscriminate netting of Pacific Salmon. • Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and TU create Bring Back the Natives to restore native fish, and TU sues California Dept. of Fish and Game forcing study of its trout stocking program. Big Blackfoot Chapter with Orvis and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation launch $1 million campaign to restore the river made famous by Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. • TU fields its first Home Rivers Initiative – a broad scale conservation effort addressing conservation, economic, and social goals – on the Beaverkill and Willowemoc watershed. Similar initiatives would be initiated on the Boise River, Snake River (Col.); Potomac headwaters, Bear River, American Fork, South Fork Snake River, Jefferson River, Kettle Creek, and West Fork Kickapoo River. • Northeast Kingdom chapter achieves victory when it and allies in Vermont obtains ruling from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that Newport #11 Dam on the Clyde River would not be relicensed. Also in New England, the Kennebec River Chapter, and a coalition of champions for Maine natural resources, secures FERC’s agreement that the Edwards Dam at Augusta should be removed. The structure was taken out in 1999, opening 17-miles of river to salmon, shad, striped bass, and alewives. • Western Water Project is initiated with the opening of offices in Boulder, Colo. and Missoula, Mont. Offices have been added in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Professional staff, TU volunteers, and public and private sector partners since have brokered agreements that stabilize sustainable stream flows, remove or mitigate barriers to migrating trout and salmon, and build political will to forestall large-scale mining, oil and gas drilling, and timbering ventures that threaten water quality. • “Hands Across the Border,” a joint report from Trout Unlimited and Trout Unlimited – Canada, offers recommendations to resolve the stalemate on implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. • A week-long The Rivers Conservation and Fishing Camp for youth Pennsylvania’s Yellow Breeches Creek, founded by the Cumberland Valley Chapter in 1995, immerses high school aged students in stream ecology, fisheries science, and techniques for successful fly and spin fishing. Today, more than a dozen state councils operate summer coldwater conservation camps.
• Back-the-Brookie, conceived as a campaign to engage citizens of North Carolina and Tennessee to restore the Southern Appalachian Brook Trout and fight for stronger clean air and water laws, evolves into TU’s largest conservation initiative: The Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture. The venture unites 17 states, six federal agencies, a number of universities, and hundreds of TU chapters and thousands of members in the restoration of brook trout to its home waters from Maine to Georgia. TU’s campaign, Strategies for Restoring Native Trout, succeeds in re-establishing Bonneville and Lahontan cutthroats in streams in Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming. • With funding from the Tiffany Foundation, TU, Snowbird Resorts, and the Forest Service clean-up Pacific Mine in American Fork Canyon, creating a model for mitigation of drainage and tailings from more than 500,000 abandoned hard-rock mines in the West. As this is being written, TU and a host of collaborators are fighting the creation of an Alaskan gold mining district as big as the state of Rhode Island that threatens to eliminate Pacific salmon from the headwaters of Bristol Bay. Unless TU and its partners are successful, 12,500 jobs that provide the sole livelihood for residents of small towns and villages in Southwest Alaska will be lost. • In addition, the West Branch Susquehanna Restoration Initiative builds on the 1998 Kettle Creek Home Rivers Initiative and is developing plans and funding to address acid seepage from old coal mines in a 7,000 square mile area of Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Highlands of Pennsylvania. • Ever seeking a balance between the needs of society overall and the imperative to conserve valuable natural resources, TU members and staff encouraged Congress to pass legislation permanently protecting the Rocky Mountain Front from oil and gas drilling. President George W. Bush signs legislation prohibiting oil and gas development on 40,000 acres of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest, known as the Valle Vidal. Both measures protect populations of native cutthroat trout. • Increasingly, TU chapters and councils are developing curricula that interface with state standards of learning so that educators can include lessons about conserving mountain streams and spring creeks as they teach. Trout-in-the-Classroom, the program where school children learn about the development of fish from egg to fingerling and then stock the trout they’ve raised is found in more than 300 schools nationwide. • To measure quantitatively whether its conservation initiatives are achieving their goals, TU is developing the Conservation Success Index (CSI). The CSI melds population data from trout assessments completed by state and federal agencies with spatial data on habitat and threats gathered by TU’s staff scientists to create a common analytical framework applicable to all native coldwater salmonids. This approach allows TU to direct organizational resources to the places that are most in need and where the greatest conservation benefits can be achieved. The CSI is being integrated with GIS programs used by most governmental agencies and conservation organizations to enhance planning at local, regional, state, and national levels.
As it enters its second half-century, Trout Unlimited knows that the environment faces massive challenges from global warming, competition for water, and the quest for supplies of energy. To meet these challenges, TU is committed to developing strategies based on the best science and broad understanding of social and economic impacts. To guide it into the future, TU has defined goals in four broad themes: Protect watersheds to ensure the highest quality habitat for native and wild fish; Reconnect fragmented streams to sustain healthy populations of native and wild fish; Restore degraded coldwater habitat thorough collaboration with landowners and other stakeholders; and Sustain conservation efforts by building capacity within all levels of TU with a particular emphasis on enabling young people to successfully engage in long-term conservation efforts so that TU’s legacy will endure beyond the current generation. Excerpted with permission from Rivers of Restoration, by John Ross, published in 2008 by Skyhorse Publishing.
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