Blog repaired and back online…
We had our blog hacked by someone with a web address in Russia a couple weeks ago. We had to rebuild it and are still working to get the photos and video links reestablished. Hopefully we will get everything back to the way it was. In the meantime 2009 has gone and 2010 arrived. And [...]
Fall is coming to Jackson
Fall is coming to Jackson, Wyoming these days. The temperature drops down below freezing each night, bull elk can be spotted in groups roving around and the bison are on the move. We are still working on the Henrys Fork. Our last aerial flight was a BAP low altitude photo recon of the Henrys [...]
A little perspective
Research vessel LM Gould and Antarctica iceberg – photo courtesy of Lindsey Peavey, Duke University Nicholas School A little perspective is a good thing always. Once immersed we can lose sight of the big picture, the end goal and reason for all the work and struggle and excitement about the environment. Perspective can bring it [...]
Where’s Waldo?
One of the great advantages of BAP is resolution. With great resolution you can see almost anything in the river. We have been working to spot trout from the photographs but they are cleverly camouflaged against the bottom. But we can distinguish people fishing in the river. If you look at the lower right [...]
Beyond Trout Part 2: Macrophytes
Welcome to the second installation of our series on ecosystem based management. Today’s post focuses on the rooted aquatic plants known as macrophytes and their impact on the Henry’s Fork. Despite their critical importance to the ecosystem, very little macrophyte research has been conducted since Ruth Shea’s work in the 90′s. MVF is currently using [...]
Beyond Trout
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911 Reestablishing historic trout populations on the Henry’s Fork is a primary objective of the Caldera Restoration Project and our work in Idaho over the past two months, [...]
Water Quality Sampling on the Henrys Fork
Maddie and Annemarie count aquatic bugs downstream from Island Park Dam. On July 23rd I participated in water quality testing on the Henry’s Fork with Marine Ventures and Henry’s Fork Foundation. I have a strong interest in water quality from an internship I took on last spring with the BioSITE program at the Children’s Discovery [...]
Lower River Exploration
Conservation work is never easy. The powers in control continue to extract the wealth of the earth through massive irrigation projects and overfishing. We have been pretty busy this summer on the Henrys Fork baselining the watershed from the air – both balloon aerial photography as well as from the Lighthawk Foundation airplane. We just [...]
40 million salmon can’t be wrong…
The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle reports a disturbing story today… One that should shock anyone who has any exposure to hatchery-based trout or salmon fsiheries. There have been great fish tragedies in our time but none like the story of California salmon. Once THE LARGEST salmon run on the West Coast, the [...]
Henrys Fork Sunset Magazine article from 1994….
Understanding how to restore a trout river in decline is not an easy task. It might be easy to get a backhoe and dig out some deeper channels or add logs or boulders to make better habitat. However the Ranch has perplexed locals for decades as to what is causing the decline and how to [...]
Playing it safe?
MVF’s Carson and McCain McMurray doing underwater transect work at Osborne Bridge, Henrys Fork. We have just finished three weeks of intense work on the Henrys Fork. Slowed down by two solid weeks of rain, it all came together as we were able to shoot over 4,000 aerial pictures of the Henrys Fork watershed. The [...]
Aerial Photos from the Henrys Fork
We had our first sunny day in the last two weeks here and shot over 200 aerial photos of the midsection of the Ranch. The conditions were great but only for an hour or so. When we arrived, there was a dense low ground fog over the river. As it cleared we launched and started [...]
BAP Take One…
17 June 2009 — Today was the first day testing for our balloon aerial photography (BAP) rig on the Henry’s Fork in Last Chance, Idaho. Although wind, overcast skies, and some scattered showers rattled the camera and reduced photo quality, we still managed to capture a few good shots. The goal of this BAP operation [...]
Henry’s Fork Caldera Restoration update
On May 21, 2009 we participated in a Henry’s Fork Caldera Restoration Meeting where key members of two HFF advisory committees floated the Ranch section of Harriman State Park. The goal of the float was to talk about the history of the Ranch fishing, significant watershed events over the past several decades and available scientific [...]
Spring Runoff almost over…
The Spring runoff continues here on the Snake River. The flows have dropped considerably but we still have one more peak to get thru before the river flows begin to subside. The weather has been cloudy and cool with light rain for the past week thus we have not been able to fly the balloons [...]
