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CalTrout’s Hat Creek Restoration Project originated to restore a legacy of fly fishing in Northern California. But we quickly realized that this project is about far more than fishing. As with so many of our projects, the deeper meaning lies in the connection between local people and the places that we work.
Whether we’re engaging rice farmers to restore floodplains in the Yolo Bypass, or incentivizing irrigators to restore flows in the Shasta River, our projects succeed because we use innovative approaches to solving complex social, economic, and ecological problems.
With Hat Creek, our restoration site rests on the sacred ancestral lands of the Illmawi Band of the Pit River Tribe. Therefore, a successful conservation outcome depends largely on our ability to engage the Illmawi in the project in a meaningful and lasting way. The tribe’s priority remains the protection of their cultural resources including the numerous archeological sites existing throughout the project area.
Most CalTrout members know Hat Creek as one of California’s most famous Wild Trout Waters, but few realize the significance of these lands to the Illmawi people: the original inhabitants. Even fewer know about the deep and painful scar formed by the Pit River Tribe’s effort to reclaim their ancestral lands.