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
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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"]
my back to where I know we are headed.For my father
I think by now the river must be thickwith salmon. Late August, I imagine itas it was that morning: drizzle needlingthe surface, mist at the banks like a netsettling around us — everything dampand shining. That morning, awkwardand heavy in our hip waders, we stalkedinto the current and found our places —you upstream a few yards and outfar deeper. You must remember howthe river seeped in over your bootsand you grew heavier with that defeat.All day I kept turning to watch you, howfirst you mimed our guide's castingthen cast your invisible line, slicing the skybetween us; and later, rod in hand, howyou tried — again and again — to findthat perfect arc, flight of an insectskimming the river's surface. Perhapsyou recall I cast my line and reeled intwo small trout we could not keep.Because I had to release them, I confess,I thought about the past — workingthe hooks loose, the fish writhingin my hands, each one slipping awaybefore I could let go. I can tell you nowthat I tried to take it all in, record itfor an elegy I'd write — one day —when the time came. Your daughter,I was that ruthless. What does it matterif I tell you I learned to be? You kept castingyour line, and when it did not come backempty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,dreaming, I step again into the small boatthat carried us out and watch the bank receding —
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Please be kind to each other while you can.
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