America's Last Best Trout Water Is Under Threat — Here's What's at Stake

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The 2001 Roadless Rule protects some of the finest wild trout and salmon habitat left in the country, and efforts to repeal it could permanently alter the rivers and streams we fish. Here's why every angler should be paying attention.

There's a reason the best trout fishing you've ever had probably happened somewhere you had to work to reach. Undisturbed watersheds — where roads haven't carved through ridgelines, where sediment loads stay low, and where streamside canopy remains intact — produce the kind of cold, clear, well-oxygenated water that native cutthroat, bull trout, and wild steelhead need to survive. Much of that water exists today because of the 2001 Roadless Rule.

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