NJ Trout Unlimited is the official New Jersey affiliate of Trout Unlimited, America’s leading coldwater conservation advocacy organization.
Conserving wild trout and salmon begins with conserving the watersheds that gave us our native coldwater fish stocks, and today support a bounty of native and wild fish. All North American fishes known as “trout,” “salmon,” “char,” “steelhead,” “grayling,” or “whitefish,” along with some other common names, fall into this group, the Salmonidae.
Probably the single-most distinguishing feature that separates the salmonid from other fishes is its need for cold, clean water and healthy ecosystems to survive. Although their evolution dates back tens of millions of years, most salmonids living in North America today moved into their historical range as they followed melting ice inland thousands of years ago. Because of their history, trout and salmon have little or no tolerance for higher water temperatures, pollution, increased dissolved gases, and other problems often associated with humankind’s encroachment.
TU focuses its trout and salmon conservation efforts on several fronts. From local on-the-ground habitat protection to lobbying at the highest levels of government, TU uses science as its key weapon in the fight to conserve, protect and restore North America’s trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds. These efforts generally target one or more of the so-called “Four Hs” of fisheries conservation – habitat, hydropower, harvest and hatcheries.
