Congress Appropriates More Than $2 Million to Protect the Smith River

Good news has come from Congress for Western Rivers Conservancy's initiative to protect the Smith River of California, one of the critical strongholds for wild salmon in the lower forty-eight states.

In partnership with the Smith River Alliance, California Trout and the Six Rivers National Forest, WRC has succeeded in rallying statewide support for this project. The result: Congress has appropriated a little over $2 million for the U.S. Forest Service to buy the first portion of Goose Creek. This first purchase will likely occur in June 2005. With luck, the remaining land will follow a year later, protecting Goose Creek and with it the pure waters of the Smith River.

Flowing through the redwood forests of Californias north coast, the Smith is California's only major undammed river. While the main-stem Smith flows primarily through protected state and national parks and wilderness, most of the watershed of Goose Creek, the Smith's largest tributary, is owned by a Seattle-based timber group, Green Diamond Resource Company. Working cooperatively with Green Diamond, WRC has made a deal to buy all 9,483 acres of private land in the Goose Creek watershed. Our purchase will remove the danger of landslides and erosion from logging Goose Creek's steep, unstable slopes.