The agency awarded the 2015 Rise to the Future award to Dave Lass, TU's California Field Director, and Deborah Urich, Tahoe National Forest Fisheries Biologist.

Lass and Urich were honored for the category of Aquatic Recreational Accomplishment.

In honoring Lass and Urich for their roles in the Little Truckee River Fish Habitat Improvement Project, the Forest Service said, “Between 2012 and 2015, Deborah and David worked with a number of partners to raise $750,000 to improve aquatic habitat on the Little Truckee River. This interdisciplinary effort involved more than a dozen partners that included the Bureau of Reclamation, National Forest Foundation, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and local Trout Unlimited chapter that protected sensitive archeology sites and rare and threatened plants and fish, created a volunteer agreement to manage unauthorized off-highway vehicle use, and mobilized three volunteer work days on this highly popular recreational fishery.”

The Little Truckee, or “LT,” is the largest tributary to the Truckee River downstream of Lake Tahoe and is a famously technical wild trout fishery. The project had four specific goals: improve habitat for all life stages of wild trout; disperse recreational use and improve the angling experience; encourage public engagement in watershed restoration through volunteerism; and sustain the region’s angling-related economy.

Over the past two years, Lass organized several volunteer work days on the LT, planting willows and using a bucket brigade to place gravel in the streambed to foster spawning. Then, in August and September of 2015, bulldozers, trucks and excavators completed the final phase of the project, installing trees, boulders, willows and more gravels.

Lass commissioned two videos to highlight the before-and-after character of the project reach. Watch below.

Within a few days, trout were occupying the new-and-improved habitat. And the fishing? Still world class. In a few years, expect more and bigger fish—all wild—in many more spots, on the LT.

Lass and the Tahoe Trout Bums of the Truckee River TU chapter didn’t undertake the LT habitat improvement project for accolades—they did it for the fish, and for their fellow anglers. The Rise to the Future award is a nice reminder that sometimes, when you do something good, the outcomes resonate further afield than you expected. TU also wishes to thank the National Forest Foundation Treasured Landscapes Program for their support to make the LT project happen.