World Trout Grassroots Recipients – 2012

Atlantic Salmon Federation
The goal of this project is to provide native sea-run fish species full access to their historic habitat in the Sabattus River, a major tributary of the Androscoggin River watershed in Maine. Our funding helped pay for the removal of the Mill Street dam from the Sabattus River.

California Trout
Cal Trout requested funding to support a grassroots campaign to designate 32 miles of the Upper Truckee River as part of the National Wild & Scenic River system and secure long term protection for the only remaining population of wild self -sustaining Lahontan Cutthroat trout in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The grant was used to implement a grassroots campaign to educate stakeholders on protecting the Upper Truckee River and garner support for Wild & Scenic designation.

Center for Justice/Spokane Riverkeeper
This is a project to protect the native Redband trout and their habitat in the Spokane River by ensuring that the proposed shoreline habitat plans meet their legal requirements. They are also using “on the water” Riverkeeper patrols to identify potential developments that may impact trout habitat. They are also fighting a new massive dock development in prime Redband spawning grounds.

Federation of Fly Fishers
With this grant, we provided support of FFF’s existing study to identify potential Native Fish Conservation Areas in the Upper Snake River Basin. Their analysis has identified a set of watersheds with high quality habitat and native fish and will set the stage to focus conservation efforts in these watersheds to protect and restore entire native fish communities.

Friends of the Teton River
This project enabled FTR to work with Canyon Creek irrigators to develop strategies for removing irrigation infrastructure and restore stream flows to a Yellowstone cutthroat trout spawning stronghold in the Teton watershed. This project is an outgrowth of a project we funded last fiscal year with FTR called, Keep the Teton Canyon Wild and Free. It has great potential to be a model for future projects, providing an alternative to dams and water storage reservoirs that threaten similar creeks in the Teton Canyon watershed.

Jones River Watershed Association
JRWA’s river restoration goal is to provide passage for migrating alewives from Cape Cod Bay to Silver Lake. They have succeeded in taking one of three dams out and are working on the Forge Pond Dam, which will permit fish to pass between the lake and the river for the first time in 100 years. This proposal sought our help to develop the engineering design of the preferred alternative from a feasibility study at the dam.

Middle Rogue Watershed Council
The goal of this proposal is to restore riparian function on 5 priority streams in the middle section of the Rogue River in southern Oregon. The work would benefit wild runs of salmon and steelhead in the middle Rogue sub-basin and build a watershed stewardship ethic amongst the local community volunteers doing the work.

Moray Firth Sea Trout Project
The Moray Firth Sea Trout Project is a collaborative project combining the efforts of River Boards and Fishery Trusts and many angling associations within the Inner Moray Firth Catchment. The project addresses the imbalance in sea trout management, collates existing information on sea trout stocks and identifies where further data is required to facilitate improved management practice. This proposal focuses on stream restoration and education, specifically on the River Peffery and Beauly Burns (streams) around the Moray Firth in the north of Scotland.

Native Fish Society
The goal of this campaign is to end hatchery plantings in the Sandy River and to activate the public to challenge similar programs across the Pacific Northwest. This campaign puts public pressure on the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and NOAA to stop this destructive practice and to give wild salmon and steelhead a chance to recover.

Pacific Rivers Council
This is the 3rd year that PRC requested funding for the stream steward program, which has been very successful and exceeded PRC expectations of community involvement and agency partnerships. The project is focused on data collection (stream temperature, general stream habitat characteristics, salmonid spawner surveys) with an eye toward utilizing the collected data when making policy and conservation recommendations.

Rattlesnake Creek Watershed Group
This is a project whose goal is to protect native westslope cutthroat and bull trout by maintaining and repairing existing fish screens along the headwaters of Rattlesnake Creek, in the southern Mission Mountains of Montana. It is a community based project to improve fisheries health in the watershed by involving and encouraging property owners and volunteers to be advocates for the native trout.

S.A.R.E.P. Youth Fly Fishing Program
An all-volunteer group, that’s committed to restoring the brook trout population in Canadaway Creek in western New York and teach kids how to fly fish.

Salmonid Restoration Federation
Our grant helped fund a Steelhead Summit which focused on stewardship, sustainable management, and restoration of California's salmon, steelhead, and trout populations and their habitat.

Sanctuary Forest
This grant proposal deals with the issue of coho salmon going extinct on the Mattole River, a small undammed river in northern California. This request from the SFG focuses on pilot projects to restore groundwater, stream flow, and Coho salmon habitat in the headwaters. The projects are testing the feasibility of specific stream flow enhancement activities on tributaries of the Mattole to increase in stream flow for the fish (especially during the summer months).

Siskiyou Land Conservancy
The proposal supports the SLC’s efforts to reduce excessive pesticide use on lily fields surrounding the Smith River estuary. The Smith River contains more miles of designated Wild & Scenic than any other river in the lower 48 states and is the only major undammed river in California. It also supports healthy salmon and steelhead runs (though these numbers have been declining in recent years).

Snake River Fund
This is a 3rd year project that continued SRF’s successful River Ambassador Program where they steward a heavily used and unmanaged reach of the Snake River watershed in Wyoming.

Wild Fish Conservancy
This project seeks to expand the knowledge of viral transmission in the Kennedy Lake/Clayoquot Sound system on Vancouver Island. They are investigating the levels and transmission of these pathogens in juvenile salmon and requested our support to cover the cost of analyzing the samples. The sockeye, coho, and chinook salmon populations are in steep decline in this area.

Wild Salmon Center
This is the 3rd year that WSC has asked for support of their Sakhalin Taimen Conservation Partnership on the Koppi River in Khabarovsk, Russia. They have moved from protection (Koppi River Preserve) to more community involvement, coordinated conservation planning and public monitoring to ensure protection of the reserve. Our grant support will help to implement a tagging program, a study of impacts of recreational fishing, and to increase surveillance in the area to deter poaching.

Wyoming Wildlife Federation
A project whose goal is to preserve Colorado River Cutthroat Trout (CRCT) in the Green River watershed of western WY. Funding for this proposal helps expand public support for trout conservation and works to ensure CRCT streams are considered in the Resource Management Plan revision. Another goal of the project is to work to cancel the Aaron Miles water pipeline, which would divert 81 billion gallons of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the Green River and pipe it 81 miles to the front range of Colorado.