• Many other projects have been completed or planned.

According to Tanner Belnap, the Salt River Watershed Manager of Trout Unlimited, the entity is the largest cold-water conservation organization in the world.

“We work all over North America,” he said in a recent interview with SVI. “Any river or stream that has salmon or trout in it, we are involved with their conservation.”

Belnap, who admits that even with the word manager in his job title he “manages no one”, is a busy man who is passionate about the area waterways including the Greys River and the McCoy Creek watershed.

In the last year Trout Unlimited worked with landowners on what Belnap described as a major diversion or head gate replacement on a third-of-a-mile stretch south of Etna. This also improved bank stabilization and provided habitat restoration.

“As with many parts of the Salt River the banks were heavily erosive,” he said. “Eroding about one to three feet per year and putting a lot of sediment into the river and land owners were concerned about all the land they were losing.”

The runoff from the historic winter of 2023 caused some major issues.

“During the high runoff we had last year those banks moved 50 feet plus,” Belnap stated. “Those were seven-foot tall banks that were several hundred feet long. Losing 50 feet from the river you can imagine how much sediment that is and how scary that is as a landowner when that’s going right at your house.”

Trout Unlimited stepped in to help with the situation.

“We stabilized those banks with what we call toe wood as opposed to riprap where you direct the energy downstream.”

A toe wood sod-mat is where logs are embedded into the bank with root wads sticking out into the river. Riprap is rock, gravel or over shoreline structures to support shorelines against erosion.

“We plant the willows behind them so they will mature long before those logs decompose,” Belnap continued. “Then you have a nice strong living bank with excellent habitat quality. Land owners and downstream irrigators were having to rebuild their dams every single year. The main reason is the head gate was just too low in the river so we moved the head gate upstream so they can get their water without building a dam every year.”

This is an expensive project and the Trout Unlimited organization works with land owners to find the solution.

“It’s about a million-dollar total project,” Belnap added. “There’s no way the landowner can do it on their own and invest that much money. Many times they work with us to pay for the design and then I’m able to take those designs and apply for grants to help pay for the construction costs.”

There are several upcoming projects which are slated for construction in 2025 or 2026. One is approximately a mile of stream restoration at the Clarks Barn public access area.

“There’s another diversion replacement there where irrigators are having major issues,” Belnap said. “The other project is down in the Narrows in a very popular stretch for floating. It’s about two and a half miles that’s lost a lot of stream length. It’s very poor quality for trout habitat. It’s very over-steepened and there’s so much energy in the river that it’s eroding banks and landowners are having to put concrete in to hold banks and keep their head gates working.”

Trout Unlimited benefits from area volunteers and landowners. There is a fundraiser for the organization coming up on April 20 at the Donn Wooden Civic Center in Alpine. The event is an International fly-fishing film festival and will have over $5,000 in prizes. Look for more details on the Events tab of svinews.com and in the April 17 edition of the Star Valley Independent.