Angling for a fresh start - Spokesman.com - June 6, 2010

BOVILL, Idaho – Joe plunges a narrow shovel into the rich black soil beside a rushing creek, drops a sedge into the hole and packs it tight.

He repeats the move several times, until his satchel of riparian plants is empty. Joe is one in a group of about 10 teenage boys with troubled pasts clad in hip waders and sweatshirts getting dirty in the headwaters of the East Fork of the Potlatch Creek.

He and the rest of the boys are helping a habitat improvement crew from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plant riparian vegetation along the creek as it meanders through a meadow. Not too long ago adult steelhead returned to the small creek to spawn. The plants the boys are dropping into holes will help stabilize the stream’s banks, reduce erosion and provide shade for the young steelhead that will soon emerge from redds on the creek’s gravelly bottom.

The young fish will need a healthy environment if they are to mature, make their way to the Pacific Ocean and eventually return to spawn. As they rear in the stream, they will learn how to feed, how to dart away from predators and generally how to survive and thrive.

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