TU Snake River Headwaters Initiative - Issue #18
Dear Friends,
Hello from Jackson Hole and welcome to the 18th edition of our e-newsletter! Summer is here in all of its full glory - with sunshine-filled days, adventures near and far, and fish hungry for flies.
Since my last dispatch, spring has come and gone in a whirlwind of activity. I’ve survived (and recovered from) a near-death experience with a scorpion, traveled near and far for project tours, staff retreats, regional meetings, youth education, banquets, and more, navigated staffing changes, and managed to carve out some time for family camping and fishing trips. Needless to say, it’s been an incredibly busy time, short on rest and recharge, but made fulfilling by being able to see and connect with all the good people in the TU universe.
We hope you will enjoy this summer e-newsletter issue, which features my “Jackson story” in the JH News and Guide and Visit Jackson Hole, a tour with the BOR Commissioner and other watershed group news, a water and flows focused article in the summer edition of the Jackson Hole Magazine, our new Snake River Headwaters Senior Project Manager’s bio, youth education highlights, and a spotlight on our work in the Salt. As always, we would love to hear from you - and we hope to see you this summer!
All the best,
Leslie Steen
Featured in JH News and Guide and Visit JH!
Everyone has their “Jackson story” - their story of what first drew them to Jackson Hole, and why and how they stayed. Like many, I only planned to be here for a year or so after grad school, and 17 years later, I’m still here! My Jackson story was recently highlighted in the June 19th edition of the JH News and Guide. It provides some insight into how a city kid like me landed in the heart of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, in her dream job at Trout Unlimited. Fun fact not included in the article (that I might not have admitted to in my earlier years): A River Runs Through It influenced my decision to attend grad school for fisheries in Montana!
In another recent media highlight, I was asked to be part of the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board’s Stay Wild “Mountain of Youth” campaign. Here is my interview on the Visit Jackson Hole website, which includes a short video of me alongside local legends Bill Briggs and Zahan Billimoria.
BOR Commissioner Tour and Watershed Group News!
Last week, Kathy Lynch, WY Water Policy Advisor, and I drove around to eastern Idaho (the long way around Palisades Reservoir) to participate in a tour hosted by the Upper Snake Collaborative for Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton and local and regional BOR leadership. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with our partners and visit fish and water projects led by our nonprofit neighbors to the west in the Henry’s Fork, Fall River, and Teton River watersheds. The take-home message? It’s all connected (the water in the Snake River), from the Snake River Headwaters in Wyoming, to eastern Idaho, and beyond. Understanding the perspectives of water users in Idaho and learning from innovations by our partners are both important strategies to apply to our work on flows from Jackson Lake Dam.
To this end, we continue to advance our work with the Snake River Headwaters Watershed Group. Our third official meeting of the watershed group, held on May 22nd, included presentations by Sue Lowry, former Interstate Streams Administrator for the WY State Engineer’s Office, Brian Stevens from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Snake Field Office, Kristen Landreville, Jeff Baldock, and Jeff Hamerlinck from the University of Wyoming WyACT program, Clint Muhlfeld from the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, and Rob Van Kirk and Christina Morrisett from the Henry’s Fork Foundation. We are continuing to increase knowledge-exchange and communication among members, collectively learning about the water management system, science communications, fisheries and climate, and data and monitoring tools.
And… this just in, we have some incredible news to share! We were notified today that we have been awarded $300,000 in funding from the BOR WaterSMART Cooperative Watershed Management Program to sustain the efforts of our new watershed group for the next 3 years. This funding will allow us to fund our 3rd party facilitation team, amplify stakeholder engagement, increase our communications tools, and more! In addition, we are pleased to report that our Salt River Watershed Group has also received $200,000 from the BOR WaterSMART CWMP for its ongoing efforts.
Jackson Hole Magazine: The Ways of Water
This summer’s issue of the Jackson Hole News and Guide includes an in-depth article about water management from Jackson Lake Dam by Molly Absolon, “The Ways of Water”. Absolon writes, “Laws say that water in the West must be put to “beneficial use.” Historically, that has meant agriculture, but could recreation and ecosystem health enter the conversation?” The article interviews me alongside other nonprofit leaders, Idaho water users, agency officials, and business owners, and provides good insight into the complexity of the issues ahead of us.
Welcome, Kole Stewart!
Like a river, the only constant is change… We are happy to share that Kole Stewart has joined us as our new Snake River Headwaters Senior Project Manager as of July 1st. Kole will be taking over our local project management from Sawyer Finley, who you can now find out on the water as a fishing guide for Grand Teton Fly Fishing. With an incredible breadth of experience in diverse ecosystems, the common thread across Kole’s conservation career has been working with partners and using outside-the-box thinking to solve complex and sometimes controversial problems. This position brings his career full circle back to the area where it began. Originally from Kansas, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Biology, he was soon drawn out west to work in fisheries in Yellowstone National Park. After obtaining his Master’s degree from Montana State University studying cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake and its tributaries, he has lived and worked in Wyoming for the past decade, primarily in Pinedale and Buffalo, working for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, an environmental consulting firm, and most recently, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation. In 2022, Kole, his wife and their two young children, Isa and Cooper, jumped at the opportunity to relocate back to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and move to Jackson. When asked why, he said: “This place has everything I could want and more; big mountains, wild rivers, abundant fish and wildlife, and adventure.” Kole is looking forward to stepping into this new role and working on the immediate and long-term conservation needs in the Snake River Headwaters.
Spring Youth Education Roundup
This spring, we’ve had the chance to participate in several youth education initiatives! We were happy to help kids (and some of their parents…) catch cutthroat trout out of the R Park pond as part of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s 33rd Annual Kids Fishing Day at R Park in June, followed soon after by our Jackson Adopt-a-Trout Program’s end-of-school-year field day at the Shooting Star Golf Course and Jackson National Fish Hatchery. Kudos as well to Colter Elementary teacher Joe Ahlstrom for being the first teacher to bring the TU & WGFD Trout in the Classroom program to Teton County! In July, TU and WGFD staff helped teach lessons about aquatic insects, native fish (including electrofishing!), and fish passage to the girls and boys at The WYldlife Fund’s Inspire A Kid camp on the Little Jennie Ranch in Bondurant. We are always grateful for the opportunity to slow down and teach the next generation about the importance of cold, clean water, healthy fish populations, and aquatic ecosystems.
Salt River Hits Its Stride
On one of the rainiest days of the spring, TU’s Salt River Watershed Manager Tanner Belknap hosted a well-attended field tour of Salt River projects (past, current, and upcoming) for Salt River Watershed Group and Star Valley TU members. We started at the southern end of the watershed outside of Afton, stopped in the Salt River Narrows and near Etna, and continued up to Tincup Creek outside of Freedom. The turnout, interest, and camaraderie was a great reminder of how far we have come in the two years that Tanner has been leading our efforts in the Salt. Our time-tested model – hire a person to live locally and commit to long-term relationship development, planning and project implementation – has allowed us to hit our stride in the area. Tanner has an ambitious slate of projects on deck and in the pipeline for the next 5 years, spanning from low-tech process-based projects, to irrigation infrastructure upgrades for fish passage, to large-scale habitat restoration. Please check out the new Salt River Story Map that he recently developed to help tell the story of the issues and solutions facing the watershed.
ISO: Office Space
We are putting feelers out for new office space in Jackson. While we love our current office above the Snake River Anglers (and the price is right!), we could use more space for our 2 full-time staff, 1 part-time staff, and up to 3 additional TU national staff based in Jackson, to increase our face-time, collaboration, and productivity. If you have any leads on an in-town location at an affordable or subsidized price, please let us know!