A YOUNG ANGLER lands a nice-ish trout and wants to share the photo, not only because of the fish, but because of the location: at the base of a waterfall, beneath a big bridge and a gondola, in downtown Spokane, Washington.
Jim Lichatowich is as happy as anyone that the Elwha dams on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula came down. But a recent attempt to witness the biological recovery
there reminds him that there are equally stubborn obstacles to steelhead and salmon recovery that unfortunately can’t be removed with dynamite or heavy equipment. “A
former colleague of mine organized a trip to Elwha after the dams were out,” Lichatowich says. “He called me and said, ‘the trip is still on but you’re not on it. The guy
from National Marine Fisheries Service that was gonna show us around mentioned your name to his supervisor and was told you couldn’t come.’ So I was uninvited. But that was the week that Republicans shut the government down, so no one got to go anyway.”