Damn dams, don’t damn fisheries!

 I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a Trout Unlimited member involved in fundraising and related efforts in support of removing two dams on the Kinnickinnic River in River Falls, WI. Much background on that effort can be found at the Kinni Corridor Collaborative web site.

part of Kinnickinnic River restoration

Photo by J. Harrington

Although restoration of a free-flowing Kinni is important, I don’t believe there are threatened or endangered species involved, unlike a situation involving Atlantic salmon in Maine, back in my native New England. In a message I recently received, Trout Unlimited asked:

Did you know that wild Atlantic salmon are on the brink of extinction in U.S. waters? Salmon once returned to rivers from Connecticut through Maine by the hundreds of thousands. Today, fewer than 1,000 salmon return to just a few rivers in Maine.

Our best chance to save this majestic species is to remove four aging dams on the Kennebec River. Right now, federal agencies are weighing that very question, providing what is likely our last opportunity to restore a self-sustaining run of Atlantic salmon (and other important migratory species) to the Kennebec watershed.

Please join TU in urging federal fisheries officials to save our salmon by decommissioning those dams and allowing the lower Kennebec River to flow free to the sea once again.

Learn more

More and more research is supporting the physical and mental health benefits of fishing. To attain those benefits, folks need someplace to go fishing. The Kinni offers the prospect of adding miles of Class 1 trout water in a city in a large metropolitan area, the Twin Cities. Among most fly fishers, Atlantic salmon are a prized quarry. Let’s not find ourselves bemoaning the truth of Joni Mitchell’s lyrics:

Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 
Till it's gone 

Elegy ["I think by now the river must be thick"]

By Natasha Trethewey

For my father

I think by now the river must be thick

        with salmon. Late August, I imagine it

as it was that morning: drizzle needling

        the surface, mist at the banks like a net

settling around us — everything damp

        and shining. That morning, awkward

and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked

        into the current and found our places —

you upstream a few yards and out

        far deeper. You must remember how

the river seeped in over your boots

        and you grew heavier with that defeat.

All day I kept turning to watch you, how

        first you mimed our guide's casting

then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky

        between us; and later, rod in hand, how

you tried — again and again — to find

        that perfect arc, flight of an insect

skimming the river's surface. Perhaps

        you recall I cast my line and reeled in

two small trout we could not keep.

        Because I had to release them, I confess,

I thought about the past — working

        the hooks loose, the fish writhing

in my hands, each one slipping away

        before I could let go. I can tell you now

that I tried to take it all in, record it

        for an elegy I'd write — one day —

when the time came. Your daughter,

        I was that ruthless. What does it matter

if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting

        your line, and when it did not come back

empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,

        dreaming, I step again into the small boat

that carried us out and watch the bank receding —

        my back to where I know we are headed. 

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