Trout Unlimited – CTCF’s counterpart in the US?
Mid July René Beaumont was a guest of Trout Unlimited. Hosted by John Zablocki, biologist and coordinator of TU’s Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Recovery Initiative, several meetings were held with representatives of the local Chapters and the national staff and of ngo’s and governmental bodies involved in joint conservation projects. The main purpose was to meet, and to share thoughts and ideas. At this occasion René also met Zeb Hogan, a personal friend of John’s. Being an aquatic ecologist Zeb is most known from his job in the National Geographic Channel program ‘Monster Fish’. Furthermore ongoing conservation projects in the area were visited as to get more insight in TU’s expertise in the field. The most impressing one definitely was the safeguarding of one of the two remaining native populations of the delicate Lahontan cutthroat trout (once widespread in the entire Truckee River basin) in Independence Lake, California.
The general feeling about the visit is best expressed with John Zablocki’s consent to be listed as an ‘Advisor’ for CTCF and -actively- act as such. Furthermore, John and René agreed to further cooperation and made specific plans to work together on several projects on both sides of the Atlantic departing from their common, shared goal: the trout and its habitat, this being a topic with no limits, ‘sans frontières’.
