Restoration is messy

It looks as though the restoration of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers through the removal of the Milltown Dam isn't going as well as anticipated. That's not a huge surprise. What the models predict, and what nature actually unleashes in response to change are often two different things. Just as there are unintended consequences to efforts to manipulate or profit from natural resources, there can also be unanticipated consequences to attempts to reverse environmental degradation.

There's another look at the issue here, but you need to be a High Country News subscriber to access the story.

I recall a conversation I once had with an Arizona Game and Fish Department fisheries biologist. We were talking about the trout fishery at Lees Ferry on the Colorado River, and how efforts to change Glen Canyon Dam (which creates Lake Powell) might harm that tailwater fishery, or native fish farther down in the Grand Canyon. The biologist replied to one of my questions by remarking how some seem to believe all you need to do to reverse environmental harm is to remove the offending impact, be it a dam, cattle, logging, etc. But the reality is often far different. Sometimes the changes wrought by those changes make it difficult or impossible for an ecosystem to return to its preimpact conditions. The impact sets the ecosystem on a new trajectory, and it won't return to something resembling its early condition without a lot of hard work and patience.