Hoh River: We did it!
Western Rivers Conservancy believes in perseverance. If there’s a reach of river that deserves conservation, we’ll work tirelessly for it. The Hoh River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is a perfect example. After seven years negotiating with three successive landowners of the same property, we finally completed purchase of the property on Friday! We now have acquired of all of the major corporate-owned lands along the mainstem Hoh –- something we set out to achieve a decade ago.
We’re not done yet. We still have to convey these nearly 2,000 acres into the permanent stewardship of the Hoh River Trust. When this is complete, Western Rivers Conservancy will have protected almost 7,000 acres of habitat along the finest remaining salmon and steelhead river in the continental United States. The result: The entire mainstem Hoh will be preserved from Olympic National Park to the Pacific Ocean.
We're in the home stretch of this decade-long effort to forever safeguard the Hoh River for native salmon, wildlife and people. Our sincere thanks go to the Bullitt Foundation, Packard Foundation, Washington Department of Natural Resources, Congressman Norm Dicks, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and everyone who is working to see this final acquisition to completion.

nice.

Congratulations! sounds like all the effort paid off. Is all this land accessible by the public? Or has it just been preserved from development?

good job, now we just need to get people to quit wacking wild steelhead, especially 30Ibr's.....

And stop the netting!!!!!

Publicly accessible. It's the river frontage that was mainly owned by timber companies.



Ain't gonna happen completely, but check the new STS to see how we're working on getting that balanced out to get longer sport seasons and more fish spawning.

Fish on...

Todd

Fantastic work here Rich, and by all involved.

Thanks~!

DB-

Great job! This strategy was employed down here in California to restore the Mattole watershed. If you own the land, you decide what happens to the watershed, plus, it makes habitat restoration easier since you know the owners!

Thank you!

Cool stuff.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Yes! Thank you.

I think that land acquistion is one of the best long-term strategies for preserving and eventually recovering our runs.

A big thumbs up ... now on to the other issues at hand!

Nice work!

A sweet day to remember, preservation of a place like the HOH
OMG , OMG can you stand any taller, what a freaking happening guys!
Keep the momentum, we can make a difference!

I think we all owe the Hoh River Trust and Western Rivers Conservancy at least a donation...

Just a reminder to those who value this great river.

Give generously to the Hoh River Trust and/or Western Rivers Conservancy.

A sincere thank you Double Haul and everyone else working on this. What refreshing news that is!
Todd, Looking forward to reading that!

Everyone on the board should bookmark the HRT website:

click here

Without question, this is nothing but good for the river, the surrounding forest, and the anadromous fish populations. Given this development and that the Hoh Tribe has shown signs recently that they intend to be proactive with regard to protecting the Hoh's wild steelhead (I heard they went down to only two days of netting per week during the peak wild run last spring), the future of the Hoh River looks very bright.

Something we fisher types (especially those of us who are primarily bankies) may want to watch for is how this development might affect public access to the river. I have heard accounts of similar conservation efforts in Alaska that were advertised as habitat protection in the name of improved fishing and hunting opportunities but have effectively resulted in the loss of public access to those lands. I don't have any real reason to believe that is happening in this case, but I have seen a potential example of that trend in action firsthand.

When I tried to access my favorite run on the upper Hoh (which is now on HRT land) earlier this month, I was blocked by a huge mass of small cottonwoods that had intentionally been cut from both sides of the old logging road to block it. Certainly, this was not an unfamiliar sight. I figured whoever was responsible was only trying to block motorized access. As I looked for a path around the heap, however, I discovered that there was no reasonable way to negotiate the mass and get to the river on foot either. I suppose beating brush would have worked eventually, but I didn't want to spend the time or risk the integrity of my waders, so I opted for retreat to the lower river.

I don't know that the HRT had anything to do with the blockage of my former favorite access, but some reassurance that they did not would sure be nice. As regards the ecological health of one of my favorite places on Earth (which is the ultimate priority, in my mind), I think this is great news. Hopefully, it will be good news for fishing as well....