Rocky Mountain Trout Fishing, by Don Orth

Fly fishing for trout in the western US is more than a leisure activity. Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It begins with “In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” Later Maclean writes that "Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart.” The iconography of western fly fishing that Maclean and others wrote about was created by anglers, fisheries managers, tourists, guides, businesses, and region promoters.  The history of Rocky Mountain fly fishing parallels the history of our western frontier as well as fisheries management (Brown 2015). Although Henry David Thoreau maintained that “In wildness is the salvation of the world,” humans are part of the trout fishing system and helped create, destroy, or maintain the trout fishing we have today.  Here I provide a brief overview of this history.  

Montana is world famous for its fly fishing—yet a brochure boasts a photo of a brown trout on the cover (see below).  I’m not a purist or a nativist when it comes to trout. Admittedly rainbow trout outnumber native brook trout in my home state as well as surrounding states.  History of trout fishing is far from sacred.  

Cover of brochure of the Montana River Outfitters.

Era of the Displaced Native Americans (or Custer’s Last Trout Fishing) 

First trout fishers were native Americans. Native Americans used a variety of fishing methods, including weirs, spears, nets, traps, baskets, hook and line methods, baits, and even deer hair in flies. Native Americans also caught fish by hand via tickling or huddling.  This method is different from noodling for catfish, where the noodler uses fingers as bait grabbing the catfish by its mouth. American naturalist William Bartram (1739-1823) described native Americans fly fishing (Monahan ND). 

The story of Rocky Mountain trout fishing begins with displacement of native Americans from their fishing and hunting grounds. Uninhabited wilderness had to be created through the dispossession of Native people before it could be preserved (Spence 1999).  Explorers, trappers, pioneers, soldiers, and homesteaders brought fishing gear to frontier outposts.  The Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) included a designated angler, named Silas Goodrich. The expedition first described several new species of fish, including the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout and Westslope Cutthroat Trout, caught by Goodrich. Later military expeditions spent time trout fishing in addition to fighting Native Americans. Custer last stand might have been avoided if he’d joined a column of reinforcements under General George Crook.  Crook’s soldiers were comfortably camped close by on Goose Creek near the Tongue River—fishing (Monnett 1993; Owens 2002; Lessner 2010). Crook was a fly fisher, and it’s sad to think Custer would have avoided his last stand at Little Bighorn if he went fishing with General Crook.

Era of Rugged Individualism 

The term ‘rugged individualism’indicates the ideal whereby an individual is totally self-reliant and independent from outside, usually state or government, assistance. It is closely associated with the western expansion. Frontier settlers were disproportionately male, prime-age, illiterate, and foreign-born (Buzzi et al. 2017).   The Homestead Act (1862) provided adult citizens who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land.  Settlers did not want government interference with his freedom as he followed the frontier road to riches. By the 1890s loggers were removing timber, trappers we’re removing beavers, farmers were irrigating arid lands for agriculture, and some were buying land for fishing in remote areas of Rocky Mountain.  Miners and railroad workers introduced fishing with dynamite. 

The American Angler's Book: Embracing the Natural History of Sporting Fish, and the Art of Taking Them.
by Thaddeus Norris.  

When did rugged individualist become elitist fly fishers? The first fly fishers who visited wrote for outdoor magazines popularized the notion of Rocky Mountains as a paradise for fly fishing.   One of these was Thaddeus Norris, “Uncle Thad” (1811-1877), who wrote The American Angler’s Book in 1864.   Fly fishing at the time was a luxury and a leisure pursuit of only the wealthy in the U.S. Also, according to Mordue (2009) “in practice, but wholly in terms of social class distinctions fly fishing in the USA retained a sense of masculine individualism but was a means of conspicuous consumption where the angling tourist exercised power over local land and people.”

This led to a second wave of western expansion by those who argued that fly fishing was more ethical than spearfishing methods used by native Americans and fishing with hook and line to feed the homesteader's family.  This second wave include many writers who wax poetic when it comes to fly fishing.  Some writers —who are also fly fishers — claim that “fly fishers are better people all around.” (Soos 1999, p 18). At some point the frontier trout fishermen noted declines in rich abundance of trout.  Methods other than hook and line for catching trout were outlawed in most states and territories by late 19th century. Barton Evermann (1891, 1894) and David Starr Jordan (1890) were among the early Ichthyologists who did surveys in the Rocky Mountain streams.  In his 1889 surveys, Jordan commented on the many trout entrained in irrigation ditches and “left to perish in the fields.”  He also commented on the many surveyed waters where eastern brook trout were introduced and doing well. Declines in numbers of trout were inevitable...due to many causes including fishing, mining, overgrazing, water diversion, dams, logging, and removal of large wood.  The irony of rugged individuals asking for government assistance in building federal and state trout hatcheries led to the next era.   

“God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

 Izaak Walton

Hatchery Era

Trout hatcheries were an American invention and the American Fish Culturists’ Association (now the American Fisheries Society was formed in 1870). The first federal fish hatchery, known as the Baird Hatchery, was established in 1872 on the McCloud River in California.  Soon it was shipping eggs of trout and salmon throughout the US and the world (Stone 1897). Other federal hatcheries were soon built in Leadville, Colorado (1889), Bozeman, Montana (1892), and Spearfish, South Dakota (1896) to stock Cutthroat Trout, Brook Trout, Rainbow Trout, and Brown Trout into waters.  The first fish hatchery in Virginia was constructed by the Virginia Fish Commission in 1879 at a spring on Tate's Run near Wytheville (Chitwood 1989).   

  

Baird Hatchery Station on McCloud River, California.  Mount Persephone in background.  Public Domain from Livingstone Stone (1897 )  Source

Many millions of trout are produced and stocked each year to meet the demand for trout fishing. Stocking catchable trout provides higher returns and angler satisfaction (Wiley et al. 1993). But it is an expensive undertaking and bio security and fish health concerns requires substantial infrastructure improvements as well as feed and personnel costs.  While fly fishers brought notions of fishing for sport, not subsistence, and concern for angler ethics, they lobbied for regulation changes that provided more waters for fly fishing.  But scientists investigating trout waters soon revealed the fallacy of hatchery solutions and we entered the Wild Trout Restoration Era.

Wild Trout Restoration Era

An emphasis on the hatchery strategy masked a long legacy of detrimental effects of mining, dewatering, overgrazing, and other forms of stream degradation. Trout Unlimited, the largest and certainly most prominent cold‐water fishery conservation association in the USA with more than 150,000 members were vocal advocates for habitat protection.   Yet, it took many years to convince fisheries managers to quit heavy stocking.  In 1974, after studies by Dick Vincent, Montana Fish and Game Commission Montana stunned anglers across the state and the nation and stopped stocking trout in streams and rivers that supported wild trout populations (Zacheim 2006). The new strategy was based on a concept of self-propagating fisheries rather than hatchery supplementation.  Pierce et al. (2019) chronicle the many projects to focus on habitat protection and restoration to restore wild trout to the Blackfoot River.  Roderick Haig-Brown preached earlier to “just protect the habitat, the rest will take care of itself" (Sloan and Prosek 2003, p 144). This admonition to "first protect" is the foundation of Trout Unlimited’s conservation approach. Numerous restoration methods are needed for trout stream restoration, including enhancing instream flows in trout-rearing areas, preventing fish loss in irrigation canals, reconstructing altered streams to naturalize channel form and function, and fencing livestock from riparian areas (Pierce et al. 2019).

The future of wild trout and wild trout fishing is threatened by a legacy of beaver extirpation, logging, wood removal, dams, irrigation withdrawals, and more. Popular game fish, such as Walleye and Northern Pike (McMahon and Bennett 1996), and nonnative trout (Dunham et al. 2002, 2004; Quist and Hubert 2004; Budy and Gaeta  2018) displace native trout in the Rocky Mountain region. Whirling disease introduced from infected trout has the potential to reduce wild trout populations. But the threat of climate change on wild trout, especially Bull Trout and Cutthroat Trout may be most difficult to mitigate because these species are already constrained to high elevations and latitudes (Kunkel et al. 2013; Isaak et al. 2015).   The era of wild trout restoration will dominate the actions of fisheries and land managers for the next generation.

Westslope Cutthroat Trout Onchorhynchus clarkii lewisi  (Richardson, 1836)
Photo by National Park Service.  Source.

References

Brown, J. C. 2015. Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West. Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press.  248 pp.

Budy, P., and J.W. Gaeta. 2018. Brown Trout as an invader: A synthesis of problems and perspectives in North America. Pages 525-543 in Javier Lobón-Cerviá and Nuria Sanz, editors, Brown Trout: Biology, Ecology and Management, First Edition. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Buzzi, S., M. Fiszbein, and M. Gebreskilasse. 2017. Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States.  NBER Working Paper No. 23997 76 pp. 

https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2017/03/Frontier-Culture-The-Roots-and-Persistence-of-“Rugged-Individualism”-in-the-United-States-2.pdf

Chitwood, W. R. 1989. The Old Wytheville Fish Hatchery," The Mountain Laurel - The Journal of Mountain Life, September, 1989, http://mtnlaurel.com/mountain-memories/1576-the-old-wytheville-fish-hatchery.html

Dunham, J.B., S.B. Adams, R.E. Schroeter, and D.C. Novinger. 2002. Alien invasions in aquatic ecosystems: toward an understanding of brook trout invasions and potential impacts on inland cutthroat trout in western North America. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 12, 373–391.

Dunham, J.B., P.S. Pilliod, and M.K. Young. 2004. Assessing the consequences of nonnative trout in headwater ecosystems in western North America. Fisheries 29(6):18-26.

Haig-Brown, V. 1997. Deep Currents: Roderick and Ann Haig-Brown.  Orca Book Publishers, Victoria, B.C.

Evermann, B. W. 1891. A reconnaissance of the streams and lakes of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming. Fishery Bulletin 11(1):1-60

Evermann, B.W., and C. Ritter. 1894. The Fishes of the Colorado basin. fishery Bulletin 14(1):473-486.  

Isaak, D., M. Young, D. Nagel, D. Horan, and M. Groce. 2015. The cold-water climate shield: delineating refugia for preserving salmonid fishes through the 21st century. Global Change Biology 21:2540–2553.

Jordan, D. S. 1890. Report of Explorations in Colorado and Utah during the Summer of 1889, with an Account of the Fishes Found in Each of the River Basins Examined. N.d. Nineteenth Century Collections Online, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/BPshL0. Accessed 22 July 2019.

Kunkel, K.E., Stevens, L.E., Stevens, S.E., Sun, L., et al. 2013. Regional Climate Trends and Scenarios for the U.S. National Climate Assessment Part 5. NESDIS 142‐5, NOAA Technical Report.

Lessner, R. 2010. How Meriwether Lewis ‘s cutthroat trout sealed Custers fate at the Little Bighorn. American Fly Fisher 36(4) fall 2010 17

McMahon, T.E., and D.H. Bennett. 1996.  Walleye and Northern Pike: Boon or bane to Northwest Fisheries. Fisheries 21(8):6-13.

Monahan, P.  N.D.  Did native Americans invent fly fishing for bass? Midcurrent website.  Accessed July 23, 2019. https://midcurrent.com/history/did-native-americans-invent-fly-fishing-for-bass/d

Monnett, J.H. 1993. Mystery of the Bighorns: Did a fishing trip seal Custer’s fate? American Fly Fisher 19(4):2-5.

Mordue, T. 2009. Angling in modernity: A tour through society, nature and embodied passion. Current Issues in Tourism 12(5):529-552.

Owens, K. “While Custer Was Making His Last Stand: George Crook’s 1876 War on Trout in the Bighorn Country,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 52(2):58–61.

Quist, M.C. and W. A. Hubert. 2004. Bioinvasive species and the preservation of cutthroat trout in the western United States: ecological, social, and economic issues. Environmental Science and Policy 7:303-313.

Sloan, S., and J. Prosek. 2003.   Fly Fishing Is Spoken Here: The Most Prominent Anglers in the World Talk Tactics, Strategies, and Attitudes. Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut. 288 pp.

Soos, F. 1999. Bamboo Fly Rod Suite: Reflections on Fishing and the Geography of Grace.  University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia.  

Spence, M.D. 1999. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks.  Oxford University Press, New York.   190 pp.  

Stone, Livingston (1897) Artificial Propagation of Salmon on the Pacific Coast of the United States, with Notes on the Natural History of the Quinnat Salmon, Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol. 16, 1896, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office 

Pierce, R., W.L. Knotek, C. Podner, and D. Peters.  2019. Blackfoot River restoration: a thirty-year review of a wild trout conservation endeavor.  Pages xxx-xxx in American Fisheries Symposium 91. Accessed  July 20, 2019 from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4234523c3a53d2db20deb6/t/5cfd2509bb03dd000174a8da/1560094022564/Blackfoot+River+Restoration+-+a+30-year+wild+trout+conservatin+endeavor+6-3-2019.pdf

Wiley, R.W., R.A. Whaley, J.B. Satake, and M. Fowden. 1993. Assessment of stocking hatchery trout: a Wyoming perspective.  North American Journal of Fisheries Management 13:160-170.    

Zackheim, H. 2006. A history of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Fisheries Division, 1901–2005. Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Helena. Accessed https://archive.org/details/historyofmontana2005zack

Ten Things You Must Know about Stream Restoration, by Don Orth

In a world dominated by humans, managing fisheries must include restoring modified aquatic ecosystems and habitats.  Numerous approaches exist to achieve ecosystem restoration, habitat restoration, flood control, property protection, sediment management, water quality improvement, and aesthetic or recreational benefits (Wheaton et al. 2008).  Although many riverine specialists are involved in this work, we all must play a role in educating citizens on the basics of stream and riverine restoration.   In this essay, I summarize the ten things you and others must know to be effective stewards of streams and watersheds. 

1.   Stream restoration is not new.  Stream habitat improvement was the pastime of the wealthy from 1892-1931 (Thompson and Stull 2002; Bennett et al. 2008).  Government programs, such as the civilian conservation corps, provided cheap labor and expanded stream modification efforts from 1932 to 1941.   Most work done by a variety of entities from 1942 to 1967 had high failure rates, leading a long period of stagnation. Some installed structures hae high failure rates, while others persisted for long periods. For example, one log and rock dam constructed along the Upper Beaverkill River, New York, in the 1890s persisted for over 100 years (Thompson and Stull 2002).  Recently, stream restoration projects have increased in extent and number of projects, thereby creating a new industry (Bernhardt et al. 2005).   Though stream restoration techniques have a long history, what is new is the development of a stream restoration industry attempting to address more complex issues.   

Ad in American Forests on use of dynamite for stream realignment.

 2.  Most restoration projects manipulate the stream channel in short reach. Many of these small projects are of questionable value or un-evaluated.   Bernhardt et al. (2007), from a survey of 317 individual river restoration projects in the U.S.A, reported that only 46% of restoration projects even had success criteria.  Lack of criteria and the lack of monitoring undermines the credibility of stream restoration efforts for achieving positive outcomes.  Meta-analyses of macro-invertebrate and fish responses to stream restoration are not demonstrably positive (Stewart et al. 2009; Miller et al. 2010; Smucker and Detenbeck 2014; Kail et al. 2015; Roni et al. 2015; Rubin et al. 2017).  While many projects report a positive effect, one-third of projects had no or a negative effects (Kail et al. 2015).  The likelihood of failure appears to be high.  We cannot continue to assume that current practices of stream restoration provide “demonstrable physical, chemical, or biological functional improvements” (Doyle and Shields 2012, p. 500).   Part of the explanation lies in the scale of improvement. 

3.  Place matters!   Streams vary a lot, and basic physics of sediment supply and transport influence what and where treatments will be appropriate.  Streambeds are mobile, however, some are more than others.  Geomorphologists distinguish between colluvial, alluvial, and bedrock controlled channels as they develop their theories.  Furthermore, the upstream human-modifications of watershed and associated hydrologic and geomorphic changes may negate any potential channel restoration benefits (Doyle and Shields 2012).  Fish responses to stream restoration were significantly reduced as agricultural land use increased in the watershed (Kail et al. 2015).  Most evaluations of fish response to wood placement have shown positive responses for salmonids; those that did not did not address watershed issues (Roni et al. 2015).  Our scientific understanding of fish and macro-invertebrates, and past management of their habitats is based on small spatial scales and short time frames, whereas natural processes and human influences on large spatial scales and long time frames interact to create and maintain suitable habitat (Stoll et al. 2016). These studies and others support the need for improved strategies for prioritizing restoration projects (Stoll et al. 2016).   

Log and rock dam along the Upper Beaverkill River was built in the 1890s. (Thompson and Stull 2002).

4. Water quality criteria do not protect aquatic life.    Early guidelines for developing water quality criteria recognized the complexities of multiple stressors and variable field data, but laboratory based studies proceeded more rapidly. Consequently, the guidelines developed by experts established laboratory experiments as the primary source of water quality criteria (Buchwalter et al. 2017).  One model organism, Ceriodaphnia, is highly sensitive to pollutants; however, the water quality criteria developed from lab studies of Ceriodaphnia were not protective of many faunal groups, such as mayflies, stoneflies, crayfish, and mussels.   There are many instances where entire faunal groups were extirpated from an effluent that was deemed safe based on lab-based criteria (Pond et al. 2014).  Furthermore, we understand that the mechanisms of exposure and speciation of toxicants is critically important and cannot be ignored (Buchwalter et al. 2017).  Only a diverse body of scientific evidence can establish water quality criteria based on a more realistic weight-of-evidence approach.   

Stroubles Creek is a highly modified urban stream that drains Blacksburg, Virginia.  It displays all symptoms of the urban stream syndrome and much of the stream channel is buried underground.  Only short segments within town limits are daylighted and available for adoption. Photo by D.J. Orth. Inset illustration by Shannon L. White.

5.  Natural channel design is oversold.   This geomorphic, form-based method does not result in restoration of native biodiversity in degraded streams (Pond et al. 2014).  A process-based restoration approach that considers multiple stressors with stakeholders has the best chance of success (Beechie et al. 2010).  Restoration is also an oversold term.  Very seldom are we really involved in an “action of returning something to a former place or condition.”    Out-of-stream management practices may improve ecological conditions; however, in urban streams these practices will not return to reference conditions (Smucker and Detenbeck 2014).    

Stream mitigation banks (SMB) have necessitated the quantification of benefits created by projects so that credits can be banked and traded.  This “ growing field of SMB has the potential to reinforce the shift away from a stream restoration science, whose goals, standards of training, and legitimate content are defined by public sector scientists” (Lave et al. 2010, p. 694).   The private sector has provided incentives to deliver flood alleviation and public opinion is in favor of quick fixes for flood reduction (Langford and Shaw 2014).

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer,

 to treat everything as if it were a nail." 

Abraham Maslow 1966

Fries Dam on New River was completed in 1903 and still operates as hydroelectric generating facility.  Photo taken September 21, 2015 by D.J. Orth.

6.  Recovery times exceed study durations.   Ecosystem processes take time to allow streams to “self heal.”  While most practitioners recognize this and design to enhance these natural processes, the published studies on stream restoration effects are usually too short.   Scrimgour et al. (2014) and Marttila et al. (2016) document the slow recovery in boreal streams after more than 14 years.  Just as it may be difficult to find a “silver bullet” for evaluating restoration success (Pander and Geist 2013), it is equally difficult to know the appropriate study duration without more long-term research on stream restoration.      

  

7.   Dams and barriers change everything.  Many dams and road-crossings have already had dramatic effects on our waterscapes, and the influence is only now apparent. Legacy effects are a dominant influence on present-day aquatic communities, and many dams now exceed their design lifespan.   Yet, stream restoration is based on the assumption that all components of the aquatic and riparian communities (both strong and weak dispersers) have opportunities to recolonize and re-establish aquatic communities.  In contrast, many rare or sensitive fishes have not recolonized streams due to movement barriers (Nislow et al. 2011; Quist and Schultz 2014).  Only recently have stream restoration efforts considered the need for extensive inventories of barriers and dams (Januchowski-Hartley et al. 2013).  Barrier mitigation should be a much higher priority for stream restoration. Culverts have shorter design lifespans than dams and ecological designs for culverts permit a longer life span, reduced maintenance, and improved flood event resiliency (O’Shaughnesy et al. 2016).  Future examination needs to be made for prioritizing dam removal or renew or adapt dam operations to future climate scenarios (Ho et al. 2017).  It’s way past time to evaluate the present value of our aging dam infrastructure and plan for a decommissioning and removal of dams.  It is time for large-scale reconnection of flowing waters. 

Pygmy snaketail dragonfly, Ophiogomphus howei, one of rare dragonflies in upper New River drainage.  Photo by Denis Douceta

8.  Invertebrates get no respect.  While biomonitoring of stream water quality with macro-invertebrates has a long-standing history, invertebrates do not get the same level of attention in stream restoration efforts.  We live in an ichthyocentric world, and some regions are simply salmocentric.  However, many major groups of invertebrates, including freshwater snails, mussels, crayfish, stoneflies, and dragonflies, are at far greater risk than salmonids; furthermore, a small percent of species have even been evaluated (Collier et al. 2016).   It took a generation to convince people that “fish need water too” and we need to begin efforts to understand, and then communicate, the functional roles and ecological requirements of stream invertebrates before it is too late.  Developing a conservation strategy for at-risk invertebrate species may be useful for evaluating and prioritizing stream restoration projects (Smith et al. 2015).      

 In Oregon's Bridge Creek Watershed, researchers built a number of beaver dam analogs to encourage increased beaver activity and restore healthy river habitat. Photo by Nick Weber.

9.  Stream restoration may require beaver restoration.  Beavers dominated the waterscapes of North America before European colonists arrived. Stream restoration practitioners are using the beaver in many situations to restore riparian and wetland ecosystems that support declining populations of Pacific salmon and trout (Pollock et al. 2015).  Although there are many human and beaver conflicts in our human-dominated landscapes, the use of beavers as partners along with human stakeholder involvement can provide numerous benefits to the landowners. 

 

10.  Multiple lines of evidence are needed in diagnosing stream problems.  Available evidence suggests that current stream restoration practice is not adequate (Doyle and Shields 2012).  The only recent clear example that demonstrates that restoration is a useful conservation tool for fishes was the work on the Okaloosa Darter Etheostoma okaloosae on Elgin Air Force Base (Reeves et al. 2016).  “Modern science teaches us that a single line of evidence is not adequate and that a body of diverse work is the most effective way to establish convincing principles that stand up to the test of time.” (Buchwalter et al. 2017, p 290).  Remediation of stream degradation is very expensive.  Before any proposed remedy is implemented, a formal analysis of causes based on multiple lines of evidence should be completed.  Some case studies exemplify this process that can lead to identifying causes and appropriate remediation (Norton et al. 2009).  

Fisheries Biologist Bill Tate conducts an underwater census for Okaloosa Darter Etheostoma okaloosae from a creek on Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.  The Okaloosa Darter increased in abundance and distribution in response to stream restoration treatments    Photo by Carlton Ward Jr., carltonward.com

Conclusions

True restoration success depends on prioritizing certain actions over others (Beechie et al. 2010; Roni et al. 2015; Stoll et al. 2016).  First and foremost, we should protect high quality habitats.  This requires systematic conservation planning to prioritize aquatic sites for protection and improve the overall regional habitat quality.  Next, we should improve water quality and quantity, and restore watershed processes.  The final step, only after the other actions, is to work toward improving instream habitat.  This means we often will need to say “no” to certain unwarranted stream restoration projects.       

Stream restoration is a rapidly evolving science (Bennett et al. 2008) and the private sector is driving the science (Lave et al. 2010).  There is need for support of the science of stream restoration in order to inform the practice.  Research with long study durations and a priori power analysis would be very instructive for future stream restoration (Vaudor et al. 2015 ).

The practice of stream restoration science must be more holistic, as restoration strategies are based on multiple societal values and beliefs (Wheaton et al. 2008).  Furthermore, we need to address causes and restore processes rather than patch symptoms in the channel (Vietz et al. 2015). Integration of stream channel and riparian habitats into restoration is an integrated effort (Turunen et al. 2017) that requires multiple indicators of restoration success (Pander and Geist 2013).  Doing the restoration “thing right” will involve many scientific specialists; however, deciding what the “right thing” to do will involve dealing with people in the local social and cultural contexts.  Involving more local citizens in river restoration can serve to promote citizen awareness of both the need and value of intact river ecosystems. 

"Some problems are so complex that you have to be

highly intelligent and well informed just to be 

undecided about them."  Laurence J. Peter 

Restoring degraded streams, especially in highly urbanized watersheds, is often a ‘wicked problem.’ Rigorous evaluation is still needed to learn from successes and failures, and reduce uncertainties (Wheaton et al. 2008; Bouwes et al. 2016).  Doyle and Shields (2012) advocated for a greater emphasis on avoidance and minimization of streams to account for high uncertainty in current stream restoration practice.      

References

Beechie, T.J., D.A. Sear, J.D. Olden, G.R. Pess, J.M. Buffington, H. Moir, P. Roni, and M.M. Pollock.  2010.  Process-based principles for restoring river ecosystems. BioScience 60:209-222. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.3

Bennett, S.J., A. Simon, J.M. Castro, J.F. Atkinson, C.E. Bronner, S.S. Blersch, and A.J. Rabideau. 2011. The evolving science of stream restoration.  Stream Restoration in Dynamic Fluvial Systems: Scientific Approaches, Analyses, and Tools. Geophysical Monograph Series 194:1-9.

Bernhardt, E.S., M.A. Palmer, J.D. Allan, G. Alexander, K. Barnas, et al. 2005.  Synthesizing U.S. river restoration efforts.  Science 308:636-637.  

Bernhardt, E.S., E.B. Sudduth, M.A. Palmer, J.D. Allan, J.L. Meyer, G. Alexander, J. Follstad-Shah, B. Hassett, R. Jenkinson, R. Lave, J. McFall, L. Pagano  2007.  Restoring rivers one reach at a time: Results from a survey of U.S. river restoration practitioners.  Restoration Ecology 15(3):482-493.

Bennett, S.N., G.R. Pess, N. Bouwes, P. Roni, R.E. Bilby, S. Gallagher, J. Ruzychi, T. Buehrens K. Krueger, W. Ehinger, J. Anderson, C. Jordan, B. Bowerox, and C. Greene. 2016. Progress and challenges of testing the effectiveness of stream restoration in the Pacific Northwest using intensively monitored watersheds.  Fisheries 41(2):84-91

Buckwalter, D.B., W.H. Clements, and S.N. Luoma. 2017.  Modernizing water quality criteria in the United States: A need to expand the definition of acceptable data.  Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 36:285-291.

Collier, K.J., P.K. Probert, and M. Jeffries. 2016. Conservation of aquatic invertebrates: concerns, challenges and conundrums.  Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 26:817-837.   DOI: 10.1002/aqc.2710

Ho, M., U. Lall, M. Allaire, N. Devineni, H.H. Kwon, I. Pal, D. Raff, and D. Wegner. 2017. The future role of dams in the United States of America.  Water Resources Research 53:982-998. DOI: 10.1002/2016WR019905

Januchowski-Hartley, S. R., P. B. McIntyre, M. Diebel, P. J. Doran, D.M. Infante, C. Joseph, and J. D. Allan. 2013. Restoring aquatic ecosystem connectivity requires expanding inventories of both dams and road crossings. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11:211–217.

Kail, J., Brabec, K., M. Poppe, and K. Januschke. 2015. The effect of river restoration on fish, macroinvertebrates and aquatic macrophytes: a meta-analysis. Ecological Indicators 58:311-321.

Langford, T.E.L., and P.J. Shaw. 2014. Socio-economic, commercial and political factors in river recovery and restoration: has ecology taken a back seat?  Freshwater Reviews 7:121-138. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1608/FRJ-7.2.787

Lave, R., M. Doyle, and M. Robertson. 2010. Privatizing stream restoration in the US.  Social Studies of Science 40(5):677-703.

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