Saving Coldwater Fisheries with Chris Jordan, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

Outdoors, Wilderness, Sports, Fishing, Outdoor, Hunting, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 125 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Jordan has some unwelcome news for the watershed and fisheries restoration movement. Restoring robust populations of salmonids and other fish species in degraded rivers and wetlands is much more complex than we could have ever imagined, and we’ve been doing it wrong for decades. Most of us, even those of us who view our fishing and our rivers as a kind of religion, don’t even know what a truly healthy river looks like.

But Chris also has some welcome news, though, and it’s the subject of today’s podcast: we know how to restore functioning watersheds for coldwater fisheries now, and it’s imminently achievable. Real watershed restoration that can last and bring back healthy cold water fisheries – it’s called “process-based restoration” – is the future. It’s not just about removing archaic dams and putting curves and woody debris back into broken and degraded creeks. It’s about beavers, muck and mire and willow thickets, floodplains and aquifers, wildfire and wetlands, gravity and shade.

It is, as Chris has studied and implemented successfully for the past few decades, about “helping rivers do their jobs with a lighter hand and a larger scope” and recognizing that the messiest natural systems are the very best at producing the strongest and healthiest fisheries. Join us- 100% guaranteed, you’ll see your favorite rivers and creeks in an entirely new light.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So canneries popped up and the populations just tanked.
0:06.0	And the first response to that was to build hatcheries.
0:09.0	So there were hatcheries associated with canneries.
0:14.0	And that happened all along the West Coast up into Alaska.
0:18.0	We were exploiting this resource heavy right at the time that we were also building
0:23.6	the dams. And we hadn't even realized yet the ecological transformation that was occurring upstream
0:31.2	due to the loss of the beaver. I mean, Francis Bacon, and I think this was, he said,
0:37.4	for nature to be commanded,
0:38.7	it must first be obeyed. And then in order to obey it, you'd have to do what y'all have done,
0:44.5	which is go have a brain trust on the science. Like, how do you know what to obey if you don't
0:50.2	know how it works? Right. But I still think that the science world has to get over itself in thinking it knows how it works
0:56.1	already because you come into a problem with a preconceived notion.
0:59.4	And it's like, it couldn't possibly be that.
1:01.1	It must be this.
1:01.7	It's like, no, it's that over there.
1:04.6	Hey, everybody.
1:05.8	It's Hal Herring, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Podcast and Blast.
1:09.4	Thanks for being here.
1:16.6	Hey, I am proud to announce we have a new sponsor for our podcast, and that is silencer central.
1:18.3	If you are involved in hunting and shooting or both, you are probably looking at owning or
1:25.6	dreaming of owning a silencer suppressor the same thing for your
1:30.5	firearm. I've got my first one a couple years ago. It's been a complete game changer for me.
	...

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