The day I spoke with Ed Northen, he’d been out taking water samples for The Nature Conservancy from four streams that feed into the Silver Creek Preserve. Ed doesn’t work for TNC, but he volunteers extensively for Trout Unlimited, and this was an extension of that commitment.
“This is a good example of providing TU volunteers to help other conservation groups protect water and native fish,” he said. “TU always has a robust roster of volunteers, so we can help others in their conservation work.”
Both Ed and his wife, Carmen, have been powerhouses for the Hemingway Chapter of TU since they moved to Hailey in 2003. Always keen fly fishermen, Carmen and Ed were involved in a fly-fishing club in California that worked on simple projects to improve local small streams. But Idaho offered many more opportunities to get involved in cold water fisheries, and, nudged by TU members in Boise, Carmen and Ed resuscitated the defunct chapter in their new home waters. Carmen was the first President of the chapter.
Since then, both she and Ed have held myriad positions at the local, state, and national levels. Today the Hemingway chapter of TU has about 430 members and maintains a mailing list of 600.
Not every volunteer is a TU member, but Ed said community engagement is exceptional in the Wood River Valley, and everyone is welcome to help with the chapter’s projects.
One of the long-term projects Ed and Carmen are proud of is the yearly fish rescue. Each year the irrigation canals in the valley are dewatered as first in time water rights are activated. Although the law requires canals to have screens to keep fish from entering them, in practice very few canals have them due to the high cost and maintenance of the screens. That means, when the canal is dewatered, thousands of fish die.
“At first it was challenging to get the water masters to let us know ahead of time about the water shutoff,” said Ed. “We might get a call at night notifying us the canal would be dewatered the next day, leaving us too little time to gather volunteers.”
In addition, Fish and Game employees were required to be present as the volunteers netted the fish and transported them to the Big Wood River. Since then, water masters are much more aware of the help TU can provide, and Ed and others have been trained by Fish and Game fishery biologists so that their employees no longer have to be on hand.
The action two years ago is a great example of what Ed, Carmen, and TU volunteers can accomplish.
“Part of the actual river was shut down as well as diversion canals to supply irrigation in a hot, dry summer,” said Ed. “We had about 85 volunteers come and rescue 23,000 fish from the river and canals and return them to other areas in the river with sufficient water.”
Rescuing fish is no easy task, and plenty of volunteers are needed. A seine net is used to gather the fish into a large group. Then volunteers carefully net them, put them into 5-gallon buckets fitted with bubblers to provide oxygen, and then transfer the fish to a 300-gallon holding tank on a truck.
Ed said TU getting its own tank was a game changer: they no longer have to rely on Fish and Game to provide the necessary equipment.
The Hemingway chapter, guided by Ed and Carmen, now have their own tank with oxygen, a regulator, a bubbling stone, and a 4-inch discharge hose.
“We still work closely with Fish and Game,” Ed said. “We match the water temperature in the holding tank to the water temperature where Fish and Game wants us to transplant the fish.”
According to Carmen, that monitoring and helping volunteers is key to a successful fish rescue.
“We are very careful doing these rescues, and we always have two people counting the number of fish rescued as they are being poured from the buckets into the tank,” she said.
But fish rescue isn’t the only thing the Northen’s and chapter members are involved in.
“One spring we planted 350 willows on a tributary to the Little Lose River,” Carmen said. “We had 20 people one day to get that project done.”
According to Ed and Carmen, community outreach is critical to their chapter’s growth and success.
“Sometimes we have kids holding the seine nets and netting fish into buckets. This helps them recognize the importance of rivers, fish, and the care the natural systems need,” Ed said.
They both noted their roll has been a learning process.
“We’ve improved our techniques a lot,” said Ed. “We got better seine nets, bought our own fish tank and trailer, and greatly improved our relationships with water masters and local irrigators. And we’re careful to work closely with Fish and Game as they are the ones telling us where in the river system to return rescued fish. For example, if we rescue Brown trout, they will be transplanted higher up in the river, so they don’t compete with rainbow trout that inhabit lower sections of the river.”
Currently, Ed and Carmen are training with TU National to help chapters take on projects to enhance habitats and help fish survive climate change.
“Little changes can accumulate and provide more resilient habitat for cold water fish,” Carmen said.
With all they’ve done for the last 20 years, it’s clear Ed and Carmen are dedicated to preserving Idaho’s magnificent cold water fish populations now and for decades to come. ISI
