Volunteers from Friends of the LA River, Trout Unlimited, CalTrout and many others have rocked this event for the last 34 years, collecting more than 1.6 million pounds of debris from harming local habitat or flowing out into the Pacific Ocean. This Saturday, Oct. 5, it’s time to put the gloves back on, grab some trash bags, and get back to work at one of four sites, listed on the map. Check the link below for all the info, including shift times and locations, and register to volunteer.
Learn more about The Great LA River CleanUp and sign up>> HERE.
This was generated by an AI, which I guess is why this folks are so inquisitive about the garbage! Around 20 student volunteers from Santee School in Los Angeles posed after rounding up the muck during the 23rd Annual L.A. River Cleanup Saturday in 2013. (Jim Burns)
Typically, council meetings for the City of Paramount focus on decreasing street takeovers, ap- proving zoning ordinance changes, or funding the small city’s annual health care fair. But during the most recent meeting of 2023, Mayor Isabel Aguayo personally awarded three certificates of recognition to former students of the city’s Odyssey STEM Academy, explaining, “They provided testimony on behalf of Trout Unlimited to the California Wildlife Conservation Board in Sacramento on a plan to naturalize and revitalize a portion of the L.A. River adjacent to Dills Park.” The plan would remake part of the river into a steelhead oasis, pro- viding these imperiled fish a respite and watershed connectivity on their long journey from the Pacific Ocean to their ancestral home waters in the San Gabriel Mountains some 50 miles away. Indeed, the board funded $4.6 million to the Trout Unlimited South Coast (TUSC) chapter for the plan- ning, design, education, and outreach for the Lower L.A. River project during the next three years, making it the largest grant ever received by any TU chapter in the country.
During the past dozen years, the Los Angeles River has moved from object of dumpster humor to a symbol of urban rewilding. According to the city’s LARiverWorks, there are nine projects worth $500 million in the pipeline, from funded design stage to construction.
Although two fish passages are envisioned, one in downtown Los Angeles, the Lower L.A. River Channel Restoration and Access stands out for conservationists. “The L.A. River restoration effort is not about fishing, and it’s not really about trout,” says Bob Blankenship, of TU’s South Coast Chapter; he, along with another TU board member, Karen Barnett, spear-headed the effort. “It’s about helping local people reimagine their local river, with global exposure that will jump start other restoration efforts.”
Read the rest of the story in this month’s American Fly Fishing. I’ll post a link to it once it’s available.
When you think about it, most of the conservation buzz for us anglers who deeply care about such things is farther away.
What I mean by that is for Angelenos, catching steelhead means climbing into the car to drive to the airport (because your good buddy wouldn’t think of taking you to LAX), then an airplane, flying to Sacramento or Redding, renting an automobile, hitting the Trinity, or the Klamath or the Rogue. It’s a simple fact of the fishing world. Big river fish are in wilder places.
For many years now, I’ve advocated that while hoisting a chrome is certainly a sign that God loves us, fishing locally isn’t to be forgotten. Stalking the San Gabes in search of wild trout is such a thrill. And if you want to fish locally, you need to have a place in which to do it. All you trash pickers in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, all you stubborn advocates of the LA, I love you for all the volunteer hours you’ve put in!
Which brings us to the “taking care of what ya got” part of this story. The clever title of this book, “Rewilding the Urban Frontier: River Conservation in the Anthropocene,” uses two current catchphrases in turn. “Rewilding” is defined as “a conservation approach that involves restoring large areas of nature to their natural state.”
How would that truly apply to the Los Angeles River? I doubt the city, nor its homeowners, renters and visitors, would like to wake up one morning to find the LA was once again slipping its course. Flooding, after all, is how our river became encased in concrete and what gave the Flood Control folks an iron grip over conservation efforts.
Back in the day the river’s course could meander over several miles within its alluvial flood plane. So actually “rewilding” the LA? Not gonna happen.
Still, we’ve all waited patiently (and not so much so) for the Army Corps to make good on its promise to at least naturalizing a section of the river near downtown sculpting it to a more natural state, to bring back cooler water temps, shade and more fish-friendly environs. And watch this space for an upcoming article in American Fly Fishing about Trout Unlimited South Coast Chapter’s efforts in the lower river.
For all the money spent, actual “rewilding” is a misnomer. Many scientists, activists, politicians, and good hearts have tried to make things better for years, and maybe that’s enough. To my mind, a wildlife corridor, though essential, is not rewilding.
Of the word “anthropocene,” there can be no doubt that we live in an age in which the human hand has touched just about everything on Earth. The thing I find tricky about this definition, “the proposed name for a geological epoch following the Holocene, dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth up to the present day,” is precisely that it advocates for a geological epoch. Isn’t it a bit fanciful to include human activity as creating a geological epoch? Climate change, yes, leading to increased heat and wildfires, certainly, but to me geologic means something more.
Pegging efforts to the 1972 Clean Water Act, which acted as a catalyst for water clean ups during an era of both budding environmental awareness and explosive urban growth, the book tackles two separate tracks: ideas about preventing further loss of biodiversity; and conversations about environmental and social inequities.
Brian B. Rasmussen, a professor at Cal Lutheran, wrote the Los Angeles chapter. He contacted me a few years ago and we had a nice chat about all things “riverly” as we used to say. My thoughts are included in his chapter, which dwells mainly on the inequities of the “white river” and the “minoritized river,” in other words “fishing for fun, not food.” The lens through which he views the LA is certainly worth a read, especially for its history of carp and how they got here. The name of his chapter, after all, is “Angling in the Anthropocene: Carp and the Making of Race on the Los Angeles River.” A feature on the homeless fishing for food came out a couple of years ago in High Country News.
Finally, if you’re interested in this topic, Gonzaga Climate Institute will host a YouTube conversation with the book’s editor and some of the contributors on Tuesday, Oct. 22.
lariverflyfishing 