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.

See you on the river, Jim Burns