2 minute read
The Editor’s Note
remember the first time I crossed the
Imighty Mississippi River, when my friend and I were on a cross-country trip from California to Washington D.C. I was in college and had barely been out of California (save for trips to Lake Tahoe/ Reno and one short trip to southern Oregon), so I was already excited with every state line we were traversing.
On Interstate 80 at the Iowa/Illinois border around Davenport we drove the bridge over the Mississippi, and I was in awe of how wide the river was. I thought about the scope of the Mississippi and how it flowed all the way from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico; about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn; about the history of the Mississippi and its importance in the Civil War. Since then I’ve visited more cities along the river: Minneapolis/St. Paul, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans. It’s one of those waterways that’s full of life. Maybe someday I can fish its waters.
And as I’ve learned over the years, I can appreciate what these rivers mean to the local communities. They are the lifeblood of the people, whether it’s recreational or economic or spiritual, or all three. They are a part of the fabric of who these people are. Obviously, I felt this way in working on our feature this issue on the fight to remove dams on two of Northern California’s iconic rivers, the Eel and the Klamath. Conservationists, from the California Trout representatives I interviewed for the story to local tribal organizations, see these rivers as cultural connections to the past and important components of their future. “One piece of it that I think is really impressive is the tribal nations that exist there – especially the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa – they’ve all done amazing work, both in highlighting the importance of this area and creating real restoration powerhouses for the tributaries and the mainstem of that system,” CalTrout legal and policy director Redgie Collins said of the Klamath. “The grassroots organizations, the support from this, through multiple owners of this salmon facility, has been remarkable. They’ve really highlighted the importance of this watershed being one of the main salmon and steelhead rivers in California and Oregon.”
Collins calls the Klamath “an incredible system. To have salmon running from California to the Oregon border up to those clean headwaters of this upper Klamath spring-fed system will be amazing.”
And that’s what we all want to see from these two special rivers. The Eel and Klamath are as relevant to their people as the Mississippi is for those residing in the Heartland of America.
We need these rivers to flow freely. In the Klamath and Eel, the salmon and steelhead need that even more than we do. Let’s get removing these aging dams done. -Chris Cocoles