In Northwest dam project, fish are back in the water

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-trout-success-20120715,0,595732.story



PORT ANGELES, Wash. — When it comes to disappearing species and humanity's harmful imprints on nature, hardly anybody expects anything to go right. People move in, engineers build, wildlife dies: It's an old story.

Perhaps that's why two biologists wading through a tributary of the Elwha River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula not long ago were chortling and grabbing for their cellphones. The cause for celebration: a gray speckled trout hovering powerfully in the fast-running stream. The 35-inch fish was probably the first wild steelhead to find its way up the middle reaches of the river in 100 years.

As fish stories go, the fleeting sight of a trout in a river wouldn't usually be huge, but this one marks a crucial chapter in the efforts to reclaim the Elwha from the devastating effects of two hydropower dams.

For the better part of a century, the dams cut off salmon and steelhead from 90 miles of pristine river, much of it in Olympic National Park.