Trout Unlimited Teens are a group of teens working to learn more about conservation, volunteer for TU, and bring other teens into trout unlimited and conservation. Join us! Go to www.tu.org/teensjoin to get a membership or www.tu.org/kidsjoin if you are 12 or under.
Code of Ethics
At TU we are committed to honest and ethical behavior and to accomplishing our mission with integrity. Integrity in all aspects of our operations is key to our success as a credible broker of scientifically and economically responsible conservation solutions. This Code of Ethics is designed to put in place a system to ensure we are aware of and can take prompt action against any questionable behavior. It is also intended to help each of us focus on the duty we owe to each other, to the public, and to others with whom we do business to conduct ourselves at all times with integrity and in a way which would always make us proud if our actions were reported in the front page of our local newspapers. This Code applies to each and every one of TU’s volunteers on the chapter and council level. We each are responsible for safeguarding and promoting TU's reputation. Of course, doing the right thing won't always be easy. Many situations will involve subtleties and complexities that lead to difficult choices. When in doubt, take a step back to ask yourself whether the situation feels right, and consider whether you feel confident that your actions would withstand scrutiny. If necessary, take another careful look at this Code for guidance and seek advice from Volunteer Operations staff. Your actions should not have even the appearance of impropriety. You should be able to feel comfortable that your actions would not embarrass yourself, your fellow volunteer leaders or TU's membership should it turn out that your conduct becomes “front page” news.
I just got home from a 3 day return trip to the Upper American River Watershed near Union Valley Reservoir. I joined about 70 other people in an ongoing effort to learn more about this beautiful area. We added to the wealth of information that already exists on the natural resources of this area. We taught and learned from over 50 high school students from El Dorado and Placer Counties. The project is called the Watershed Education Summit, (or WES). Here are a few of the photos that I captured.
An exhaustive look at available data for 89 populations of chinook and coho salmon and steelhead shows that productivity in the wild shrinks in direct proportion with increases in the percentage of hatchery fish that join wild fish on the spawning grounds.
"Our results suggest that the net reproductive performance of the population will decline under all of the hatchery scenarios," according to "Reduced recruitment performance in natural populations of anadromous salmonids associated with hatchery-reared fish," a research paper published in the March 2011 edition of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. The paper was authored by Mark Chilcote of NOAA Fisheries and Ken Goodson and Matt Falcy of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "While using hatchery fish in the short-term to reduce extinction risk and temporarily boost depressed wild populations to re-establish normative biological function are laudable conservation roles, such actions come at a cost in terms of reductions in per capita recruitment performance,"the paper says. "Therefore, we conclude, as did Chilcote (2003) and Nickelson (2003), that under most circumstances the long-term conservation of wild populations is best served by the implementation of measures that minimize the interactions between wild and hatchery fish."
Read more: Wild Fish Best Served By Minimizing Wild/Hatchery .
In March 2009, The Nature Conservancy announced the protection of the 4,543-acre Shasta Big Springs Ranch in Siskiyou County, California, which will have a resounding impact on salmon, steelhead and other important species throughout the Klamath basin. As climate change progresses, the area could also become one of the last and best strongholds for coho and other salmon species in California.
See The Nature Conservancy's outstanding series of videos on YouTube.