Ep 14: Trout Headwaters, Inc. and Ecological Restoration, with Mike Sprague
Mike Sprague is the founder and CEO of Trout Headwaters, Inc., an ecological restoration design and build firm. Mike and his team focus on repairing damaged streams, wetlands, and riparian areas to bring them back to their former glory, and he believes that ecology and economy can and should coexist in order to derive the best benefit for all. In this episode, we get into some of the common threats facing headwater ecosystems and how companies like Trout Headwaters are addressing them.
Website: www.troutheadwaters.com
Instagram: @troutheadwaters
Facebook: /troutheadwaters
Twitter: @troutheadwaters
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Intro
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, where we talk all things fishing, conservation, and the outdoors. Today on the show, I'm joined by Mike Sprague, founder and CEO of Trout Headwaters. All right, welcome to episode number 14 of the Fish Untamed Podcast. Before I get started today, I do have a quick announcement to make, and that is that both the Fish Untamed podcast and Fish Untamed, the website, are going to be transitioning over to bi-weekly. So podcasts are going to be coming out once every two weeks, and blog articles will also be coming out once every two weeks. When I first started Fish Untamed, I made a promise to myself that I would never sacrifice actually going outside and having fun just for the sake of keeping up with the blog and podcast. With a couple of things on my plate over the next couple years, I think it's not going to be feasible for me to keep up with a weekly schedule on both the blog and the podcast while at the same time trying to maintain a lot of things I enjoy doing in my own time. But at the same time, I do also have fun running Fish Untamed, writing for the website, talking to people for the podcast. So cutting that out also wasn't really an option in my mind. So I figured the best course of action, the best compromise with myself was just to switch things to every two weeks instead of every week. That just gives me a lot more time to get things done while at the same time not having to put other plans on hold just for the sake of getting content out because that just feels like the worst of both worlds. So from here on out, nothing else will change really apart from the fact that things will be released bi-weekly instead of weekly. Same schedule of articles on Sundays, podcasts on Thursdays, just every other week instead of every week. So I hope most people can kind of see where I'm coming from here and won't hold it against me too much coming out every two weeks instead of every week. But I think this will be the best of both worlds. It'll give me a chance to unwind a little bit more. And I think in turn, that will allow me to keep up with the same quality I have now instead of sacrificing that for my own sanity and time. With all that aside, I can move on to today's episode. And today I am joined by Mike Sprague, who is the founder and CEO of Trout Headwaters, Inc. And Mike describes Trout Headwaters as an ecological restoration design and build firm based out of Montana. Today we mostly talk about the common threats facing the cold water habitats that most of us like to fish. Things like erosion and pollution and things like that. how Mike's company is working to restore these habitats to to get them back to their full potential. So without further ado here is my chat with Mike Sprague. Do you just want to start by talking about how you got your start at Trout Headwaters and I assume you're part of that probably has to do with being into fishing?
Mike
Trout Headwaters, really as a business we had a client before we had a business or a company which is a wonderful way to kind of organically build and ultimately to have grown a company. We were approached to do some work and asked at that point to kind of build a team and I guess that was about maybe 550 projects ago. We've been at it since 1996. Effectively, we're blessed to help kind of put the world back together. We restore wetlands and streams and habitats. And I think we've done that, I don't know, 36 or 38 states now across the US over these years.
Katie
Now what got you interested in this type of work to begin with?
Mike
I guess an appreciation for the outdoors. I was drawn to it through through fishing, you know, trout. You know, I think someone said once that by following a trout, really they'll take you to some of the most beautiful places in the world. I've certainly found that to be true as I've traveled from, you know, Alaska, the Tierra del Fuego, and lots and lots of places, frankly, in between. And you know, those are our pristine habitats, those cold water ecosystems.
Katie
I definitely agree. It's hard to find a trout in a place that's not beautiful and worth protecting. What's your elevator pitch for Trout Headwaters? if you had to explain to somebody in just a couple sentences to kind of encompass everything you do.
Mike
Sure. I think at the time we entered the industry, the industry was really quite new, but we're kind of part of that green industry, green business. We're restored. So we look to alter physical habitats as they've been degraded oftentimes by poor management, for example, or human impacts. We look to kind of reverse those and to create projects, conservation projects, restoration projects, mitigation projects that restore those and protect those in perpetuity, I like to say, which is forever kind of longer.
Katie
Now, I know trout is in the name of your business. Do you work exclusively on like cold water trout streams or do you do kind of all encompassing restoration work regardless of what type of waterway it is?
Mike
We certainly have done projects sold products into a lot of states. We very much are focused on starting at the top, if you will, and the top of drainages in the highest headwater systems. It's just kind of logical places to start. Many of our most at-risk resources, frankly, today, that's what they are. They're the most pristine cold water, highest water quality, highest dissolved oxygen and most rare kind of resources. The models I've been seeing show us with climate shifting and changing. Some of those, what we like to think of as trout habitats, those are projected to decline by, in the U.S., about 62% by 2100. That's not a great prognosis. I think that the work that we've been doing in these cold water resources now for all these years, I think it's probably as important as ever.
Katie
I think it's also important to point out that most of these headwater streams are, you know, flowing into much larger rivers that, you know, then feed out to the sea and they could be considered kind of the backbone of healthy ecosystems in that you can fix something downstream but that's not going to fix the root cause of you know where some of these problems might be coming from but if you work from from the the highest headwaters you know now you've got healthy water flowing down into other ecosystems so I'm sure there's some benefits that are seen downstream of you even if you're not directly putting your hands on those those habitats.
Mike
That's exactly right and you know the vast bulk of our projects and our clients are private individuals, property managers, investors. A lot of times people will say, "That's great for them. That's on a private property," without What kind of understanding of what the public good of that water resource is? To exactly your point, you're spot on. The issues in the Chesapeake Bay, for example, we have a number of projects in the mid-Atlantic today. The projects in the Chesapeake Bay are originating in five different states and, frankly, flowing for hundreds and accumulatively thousands of miles of stream and river into the bay. The problems in the anoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico aren't originating in the Gulf of Mexico. They're pouring there all the way from where the river is so small you can jump across it and outside of Bemidji, Minnesota for the Mississippi. You're exactly right. The idea is that we do like to start in the drainages. We're blessed to work at a landscape scale where we can make real tangible difference to everyone downstream as a result of some of these projects.
Katie
And yeah, I was gonna ask who your clients are but you had mentioned that most of them are private entities. What do you find are the primary motivations for someone giving you a call?
Mike
Hmm, you know, I think there are a lot of different reasons that someone might call us. They don't know how to manage a resource or the river is causing excess erosion or they have a question about going forward how to handle some you know specific type of high-value We think of these Natural resources as assets. How do we manage these high-value? resources these high-value assets, but there's a but at the bottom I would say for Across all of the clients that we've had I would say there's this There's this idea that they're going to leave something Better than they found it. They're gonna leave behind something better It's better than the way they found it and I that's kind of a common a common thread and really a bit of a intangible and But but I think really common to our clients
Katie
Do you have any larger clients like any any businesses or companies that have? You know property along waterways that you know Maybe the company hasn't treated it well and they want to fix it or they've just come you know they've come into this piece of property and want to fix it, but I assume that Some of the problems that you're facing are probably pre-existing and some are probably caused by you know, very local Actions, maybe people want to change. Have you noticed any patterns in that in like in what causes these issues?
Mike
You know, I think it's true that folks today, even young people today, have a much better understanding of the importance of our ecology, the importance of healthy stream systems and wetlands and waterways and habitats than certainly I ever did when I was growing up. the lessons that we've learned both here domestically and by watching other nations developing or struggling to develop across the world. I think that it'll be hard for us to forget any of that. I think that we're smarter today about the need for sustainability. And I also think, frankly, the challenge is as you start to look at things like climate change and carbon sequestration, and what do we do, and how do we do it, how do we act, how do we plan? I think the challenges at some level have demanded us to pay attention. So in general, I'm optimistic. I think every day that the Earth, this planet, this one planet we have, it has some challenges.
Katie
Mm-hmm, and I feel like there's also been a shift, I guess I would liken it to the equivalent of going to the doctor to actually get medicine to heal versus just putting a bandaid on something. And I feel like there's been more of a push lately to actually fix the root cause of the problem versus just putting a bandaid on it. You know, if there's no fish in a river, can either stock it with more fish or you can fix the river so fish can keep living there. I think this is an example of one of those, you know, actually giving the place medicine versus just slapping a band-aid on it and calling it good.
Mike
There's absolutely no question that, I mean, real restoration, what it should focus on, you know, biodiversity. It should provide us resiliency and stability and integrity, integrity. And for too long, frankly, we've probably as a nation looked for instant or shortcut or, you know, someone declaring victory in their own career time span. But again, I think the lessons of some of those experiments, some of those efforts are becoming clear. Frankly, some of the extreme weather that we see and the effects of that to our shorelines, to our stream banks, have also pushed us in a way that we do need to really focus on the long term and start thinking about these extreme events as they've been described as the new normal.
Katie
So what are some of those specific issues that you see a lot of? I know you've mentioned climate change a bit, but how does that reflect in some of these small streams that you're looking at and then what other problems are you encountering? Is it pollution? Is it you know agricultural runoff? Erosion? Like what's causing or what are the the primary factors that you're actually addressing at most of these small streams?
Mike
So first of all any sort of sort of restoration your first step should should be to figure out what what are the impacts are those impacts on ongoing and can we do to manage or mitigate the effect of those impacts? You can go and make any sort of physical change in a system you may wish, but without really understanding how that system is being impacted by management or mismanagement, I think there's nothing you're going to do that is going to end up ultimately being successful. So you need that to be-- and that management needs to be really planned. It needs to be thoughtful. needs to be adaptive, right? You need to assess where you start and ensure that your changes are getting you the direction you intend. Most of the point source problems, the pipes going out into rivers and dumping toxic sludge from, you know, the bulk of that, as you know, is across the nation been answered in our rivers in many places like where I grew up in Massachusetts are much better for it. You know, I grew up at a time and in a place where the rivers were kind of spontaneously combusting because the water quality was so highly toxic. The river I grew up near, it was too thick to swim in, but not too thick to walk on, too thick, you couldn't swim in it, but it wasn't quite thick enough you could walk on it. And it would change colors. It would be bright orange and sort of an accurate smell. I lived about a mile from that mess, and we knew not to go near it. Now, what changed was the Clean Water Act, and these factories and municipalities and so forth stopped dumping or created cleaners and scrubbers through technology to treat the effluence. And that river today, it has a self-sustaining population of trout, the canary in the mine shaft for cold water. And it was really just us removing those impacts that caused this really large scale restoration. So today, the problems are really non-point source. We've, as a nation, not all countries have done this by the way, but the US, as a nation, we've done a pretty good job of dealing with those pipes. It's the non-point source stuff now, the runoff that comes from both rural areas and urban cities across roads and parking lots and so forth. That's the challenge today.
Katie
Do you mind just quickly covering the difference between point source and non-point source pollutants just in case anyone's not familiar with them?
Mike
Sure, the simplest way to think of it is, you know, again in terms of a pipe and a discharge versus a big sheet full across some, you know, parking lot field or something else. It's those rain-driven, typically runoff events that across those pervious surfaces and across these agricultural fields that are laden with nitrates and phosphates and various types of fertilizers and petrochemicals. It's those effects now, as well as a fair amount of, frankly, channel instability that's been created by our development in the floodplains and other things in the U.S. that are the principal challenges today. A lot of what we do is putting back, frankly, what we humans have taken away. Restoring floodplains, restoring bankside vegetation, restoring stable channels, restoring water quality. Those are the activities that we've been at now for almost 25 years.
Katie
Is the lack of vegetation along stream banks mostly caused from grazing livestock or is there something else that causes that as well?
Mike
Lots of things, right? Lots of things. Sometimes people are trying to improve view sheds so they cut down all that vegetation and they replace it with rock. are lots of ways that we've sort of encroached on those buffers and not given these waterways enough space.
Katie
Do you mind going through, let's say, a typical project? I'd love to hear about a specific project or two later as well if you've got some, but just a typical project, obviously I'm sure they're all different, but when you come in somewhere, what's the process? Like, you know, how do you assess the problem and then what are the next steps in terms of finding a solution, employing that solution? Do you work at all with the owner of the land for them to do any sort of individual contributor role after you're done to keep up what you've started? Or just how does that process work?
Mike
We always start at the beginning. There are really two broad areas. We're interested in the owner's goals, because at the end of the day we want to ensure that those are achieved. We want to also inform what's possible, what's practical, what's cost-effective, what makes sense. We want to inform that. and we start by collecting a lot of field data and analyzing that information. We do a fair amount of mapping and we do everything through scheduling and construction supervision. The teams vary a bit from project to project. Some have a greater need for a water rights attorney, for example, or a specific type of engineer. So project teams tend to vary a bit. We use a bunch of stuff that we've invented-- products, services that we've commercialized and supported. different sorts of technologies broadly, analytics systems. The idea is to really reduce the amount of drag on a project, the amount of soft cost to a project, while really trying to take advantage of lots and lots of good, high-quality field data. So we start there always. We iterate in designs to achieve outcomes. We set realistic expectations. We monitor at the end of all these. And that sort of feedback loop, we're able to see if the actions we've taken, the changes we've made, the efforts, the management planning, if all that is effective, we're able to kind of plot that by monitoring on the backside. And those two pieces, which a lot of times, for some reason, people skip. They want to go do something. They just want to do it in the worst way. But what I would suggest is that you want to do the right thing. You want to be effective. You don't want to waste time, money. At worst, you don't want to do something that actually could diminish or damage some precious habitat that maybe even aware of. So getting a good high-quality professional assessment and ensuring that out of that comes some management recommendations and that at the end, regardless of what you might do in the middle, but that at the end you've got a way to kind of monitor your progress. I would say those are the vital pieces.
Katie
So what kinds of people do you employ? I'm sure there's a wide of skill sets needed to conduct one of these projects, but do you have a two or three kind of main types of employees you hire?
Mike
So, you know, I think of our team in sort of different categories or whatever. I mean, we have construction people, contractors, we have ologists, you know, various types of of technical people. We also build technology here, so data management, big data systems. And that's become a bigger part of what we're doing. So we also have some skills there. Again, to the project, it does very much depend, what exactly the goals are, what exactly the existing conditions are, and and you know what a client's really really at the end of the day trying to accomplish.
Katie
Do you work with any other organizations, you know, any of the any of the typical conservation organizations focusing on water in general or specifically coldwater or are you kind of a standalone company and don't deal with any of them?
Mike
Oh no, we've, I didn't mean to give an impression that we don't work with government and nonprofits or NGOs, but because certainly we do and we've worked with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and we've worked with different chapters of Trout Unlimited, We've sold product to the US Environmental Protection Agency and the BLM and US Fish and Wildlife Service. And so we do work with government and nonprofits. But the vast bulk of really our core business over these years has been private money being invested to restore resources. The problems are, I think, honestly, the challenges are great. And so I don't think that we should expect that, you know, government by themselves, or to your point, I think, or nonprofits by themselves, or for that matter, private businesses like us, by themselves are gonna be able to address these. So together, we do have to very much work together. We have lots of partnerships, including with the core network, which represents about 128 conservation corps across the United States, which we had both working on projects and were involved with in training to kind of put the next generation of restoration and conservation stewards out on the landscape. So I didn't mean to imply that we work only with private, other private business or individuals.
Katie
I think you make a good point. And I think a lot of organizations like that have quite a broad reach, especially some of the larger ones like Trout Unlimited. It's hard to find a single angler out there who's never heard of Trout Unlimited. But at the same time, organizations like that are sometimes, especially in local chapters, are struggling to get the funding they need to work on these projects. And I think having a healthy balance between the outreach of these organizations that offer things to just the hobbyist angler, those resources pair up greatly with private companies who can do the work. And they can make the money from it and actually put the boots on the ground to get things done. But they may not have the same reach as some of the more well-known organizations. I think that's a really good point.
Mike
Yeah, isn't it kind of funny? I've a few times through my career, Katie, I've heard people kind of talk about the fact that we're a private business like that was somehow, and we're restoring the environment. Like somehow that was not very, that was kind of tawdry or maybe not what should happen or something. Like it was the explicit purview of government or non-profits to put the world back together. And I've thought about it. I mean, just wouldn't this be terrible if we all woke up tomorrow and no matter what, no matter whether we were in government or non-profit or private business, we all just went to work on making the planet a better place, a healthier place. And wouldn't that be a place, wouldn't that be a terrible place for us all? (laughing)
Katie
Yeah, that's a good point. I've definitely heard that sentiment as well where you know if you're a Nonprofit or an NGO you're a good guy, and if you're if you're working for a profit You must be bad But you know I think it's easy to forget that there's plenty of people out there who want to do good work And you know all they need to do that good work is just a way to make a living doing it and you know all those all those people are gonna need to start their own companies, but Yeah, it's it's it's it's funny that you mentioned that
Mike
It's so interesting to me because, you know, we somehow, I think as a society, we think it's completely natural that a private business should damage the environment. It's just we're not sure they should put it, help put it back together. So I've just always thought that was funny. And I would argue that, frankly, the challenges are big enough that, you know, we can all pitch in and make a change at a really vital inflection point in the future of the globe.
Katie
So do you guys work nationwide or are you specific to the area that you're headquartered?
Mike
No we've worked I think now in 36 states across the US. I serve on boards and panels and committees in Washington, DC. We speak nationwide. And I think now over these years, we've sold products into a lot of states as well. So we do have a national footprint. We go where the work calls us. And we've been fortunate to do that.
Katie
Now do you, when you're in there doing restoration work, let's say you do a project, you get everything fixed up, do you generally assume that that will fill back in naturally with you know species that you're looking for, let's say trout or specific macroinvertebrates or are you ever doing any active restocking of those areas because they've just become completely dead or are they not usually that far gone when you're working on them?
Mike
That's a really good question. We, except for newly created offline or contained systems, have never been involved in stocking anything. I think there are real challenges and problems for. Certainly, history has shown us this with stocking in waterways around the world. Typically what we're doing is trying to restore all the building blocks. We're trying to put back in place all the building blocks and allowing nature to get jump-started. We don't work in a lot of brown fields and water that is exactly poison. That's not work we do. So by and large, nature is really resilient. She has an amazing capacity if you just give her half a chance. And we've seen that time after time after time in systems that maybe weren't considered very valuable weren't considered very productive that really in a very short amount of time could turn into something that that would surprise.
Katie
Now do you when you get a call from someone asking for your help is do you basically take on any project that anyone's willing to give you or do you are you limited on resources and need to kind of pare down what it is you're going to work on or just do you an assessment that some places just need your help more than others? Is there a need to trim down what you work on? And if so, how do you make that decision?
Mike
Well, we're actually tomorrow, and I just can't say much about it tonight because it's embargoed to the morning, but actually tomorrow, Katie, we're announcing another expansion. We have been increasingly called on to do more and more work that has been requiring us to garner more resources, more skills, more skill sets, more individuals, more talent. so to that we're lucky that increasingly the focus is on our water and our air. It's funny, isn't it? Those are about the only two things humans need, right? They need water and air. I guess eventually a little food and probably some shelter, but the two vital things are water and air. And for a long time, I would say, I'm guessing I'm older than you for a long time in my generation, my youth. I mean, that was where we put all of our pollutants, was either to the water or into the air. I think we've figured out that's not sustainable, that we have to take pretty good care of ensuring that when we turn on the tap, where we're not Flint, Michigan, and what flows isn't lead in a liquid form. I think that those, again, our attention to that, especially now at a time where there's an increased focus on climate change. You know our waters, our wetlands, these areas these are our carbon sinks right these are the resources we need to maintain really if from generations are going to be able to enjoy some of the things that you and I have
Katie
I think I think that's becoming you know fortunately I think that's becoming a more commonplace idea that air and water is is not something that we should be just throwing all our trash into like it's and that's really all we need to to live and I feel like most people I talk to these days are Of the mindset that we need to make changes. So that's that's definitely a move in the right direction I know obviously there's still much more work that needs to be done But the first step is addressing the issue. So I think that's definitely a step in the right direction On that note. Do you have any tips for how an individual say they have? property along a river and either it's in good shape and they want to keep it that way or Maybe it's it's on the way down But but doesn't quite need you know a professional help yet. Do you have any? tips for how somebody can improve the habitat within their area I
Mike
Would say that you know our website has a lot of good information lots and I mean 650 posts probably pertinent to the question and at Troutheadwaters.com anyone can go in and pull that general information. The thing that strikes me is that going forward we want to, and I don't mean to sound critical, but I think that we've done as a country a bit of a disservice by somehow segregating or separating ecology and economy. You know, both of those come from the same Greek root word, which means home. And I always hear it, one is warring with the other, or we're gonna have to sacrifice our ecology for our economy, or if we do the right thing environmentally, that's gonna damage our economy. Somehow we've separated those ideas, and in fact, I would argue, put them at war. The more we can restore our understanding that, to your point, to your question, the folks that were sitting in the wake of that oil lapping up in the BP spill, or the people that turned those taps on in Flint, Michigan, their communities, their homes, their properties, they weren't in better shape, they weren't worth more money, they weren't more saleable, their economies, because of the impact of that basic ecology had been damaged or at minimum temporarily destroyed. So the more we can kind of put those ideas back together, I would say, and the more when you look at your own property or you look at a public property that you can start to think about those special areas, you know, those green zones between the water and the upland, those riparian areas, you know, with the willows and the cottonwoods and the alders and those things. The more you can focus on keeping those healthy, keeping those intact, those provide huge benefit. A lot of times people will look at a river or a stream or a wetland and they'll, they just see the water without understanding, and they'll think, well, that's the river, the river's the water. That's not the case, the river's more than that. The river's that riparian area, it's the floodplain, it's greater than that. So the more we start to, I think, look a bit more intelligently, holistically, at those resources and kind of manage those for more than just what's wet, more than just the water, I think the better off we'll be.
Katie
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, especially on your point about how it seems these days like economy and ecology are two opposing ideas, and they're treated like opposites, when really they have nothing to do with each other in terms of whether they're opposites or related. I mean, they're each their own thing, and they can coexist, and it's something that I think about a lot I hear about, you know, for example, mining right on the edge of the boundary waters. You know, I'm, I obviously use a lot of products that use mine materials and I'm not, I'm not opposed to mining as a concept, but I don't understand why it can't coexist with the protection of, you know, a beautiful resource and why we need to, why we need to worry about getting rid of one for the other versus just making wiser decisions about where we do some of things to keep the economy alive while at the same time acknowledging that we can't sacrifice some of these amazing places that themselves provide an economic benefit to the country as well, in addition to just their inherent value. I've never understood why these two concepts can't coexist and we can't just try to make the best decision for both.
Mike
We have to make the-- I would argue we have to make the best decision for both, because really, one depends wholly on the other. We absolutely must make decisions looking out for both. Without a good ecology, you have no economy. You have no resources. You have no capacity for life to grow food. So without a healthy ecology, you have no economy. and the same is true the other way. These two things are intrinsically connected and that we've somehow separated them and pitted them against each other, I think is kind of, when you look at it from the right way, it just looks sort of crazy.
Katie
I agree. One last thing I wanted to ask you about, if you don't have anything prepared, that's totally fine, but I kind of just wanted to hear about one or two specific projects that you would consider kind of the crown jewels of Trout Headwaters work? You know, just a major success story or something like that, if you wanted to share one of those with the audience?
Mike
You know, we've been fortunate to be early to a space that's pretty new. You know, some the sciences that are being applied to technology that we commercialized and built, including folks from the Army Corps of Engineers, the US EPA, and a number of others. A rapid assessment system that allowed for stream data to be collected at a pace, at a rate, and a quantity that just hadn't ever been possible possible prior to that. We more recently, in the technology side, really to enable the industry to enable those that would compete with our company, if you will, as if somehow there's not enough work for everyone. We built a big data system for environmental big data, again, in cooperation with entities like the US Army Corps of Engineers. And it's got hundreds and hundreds of users. We're handling now something on the order of 40 million data points in analysis and projection in that system. On the ground side, We've had a lot of projects at the end of the day to see the response of the vegetation growing or the trout inhabiting the newly restored channel. The beauty of the landscape when it starts to grow in and it's in use by the birds and the predators, hunting the buffers and so forth. I mean, you know, that sort of high five moment years after the work typically, or I guess sometimes in the case of newly restored channels, I've seen that response within days. That "aha" thing that you can, know put nature back just to you can help her you can help her restoration that feeling you know as well as I guess humans believe we can destroy it but maybe we can't put it back we can and that feeling when you look at that restored habitat something frankly that's Katie it's magical.
Katie
I like that attitude hey we got to address the problem but but having a glass half full mindset of, you know, instead of just wallowing in the sorrow of some of the problems we face today just, you know, remembering that there is work that everyone can do to improve these and I'm happy to hear that things are going well and that you're making a difference in a lot of these habitats that I know we all care a lot about. Do you want to share just where people can find you if they're maybe interested in contacting you for services or just if they want to learn a little bit more about Trout Headwaters and that can make a difference?
Mike
Yeah, we're at troutheadwaters.com and all of our social media is at Trout Headwaters. So come and please leave us a note or have a look or let us know how we can help. I'd love to hear from anybody.
Katie
Awesome. Well we will also link those in the show notes so if anyone wants to go check out the work that Mike and his team are doing. I'd highly encourage it. They've got lots of blog posts online as well talking about their recent work and I believe you also have a coffee table book out too, don't you?
Mike
Yeah, there's a free ebook available of some of the recent work that we've done. I think it's 60 or so pages that show, you know, projects going to ground and so forth and it's free.
Katie
Awesome. Well, I will I'll link to that as well if anyone wants to check that out and Mike I just really appreciate you coming on today and sharing the work you're doing. I know that anyone who enjoys fishing for trout should should care about the the type of work you're doing and I would encourage anyone to to support you any way they can and otherwise just just come and check out what you're up to and consider consider doing something yourself for sensitive habitats.
Mike
Thanks a ton Katie, great talking with you.
Katie
All right, take care. All right, and that'll do it. As always if you liked what you heard go ahead and go over to the Wild Initiative podcast. You can subscribe there and get my shows bi-weekly on Thursdays and all of Sam's other shows throughout the week. You can also find my episodes on fishuntamed.com in addition to backcountry fly fishing articles, and you can find me on social media. I'm @fishuntamed on Instagram or my name Katie Burgert on GoWild and I will see you not next week But two weeks from now on Thursday and from here on out.
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.