Schooling So-Cal Kids on Fishing
Kurt Chapman, Crestline, Calif.

Sultana High School in Hesperia, Calif., is now home to an outdoors club 50 members strong that teaches students how to fish and shoot bows, in addition to instructing them in orienteering and the importance of conservation. "I want to get across to the youth of America that conservation isn't something you can wait on," says Chapman, the club's founder. He's also introducing a class called Physical Education in the Outdoors to the school curriculum. "These are the only programs of their kind in Southern California. We hope others will follow.

Restoring a City River in a Western Landscape
Todd Fehr, Denver, Colo.

Growing up, Fehr fished every day in the nearby Bushkill River in Pennsylvania. "That planted the seed for becoming a conservationist," he says, and he remembered it when he moved to Denver. The fishing in town was awful. "The South Platte was so bad, I wouldn't have wanted to fish it even as a kid." Now vice president of the Denver Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Fehr is trying to rehabilitate the river and reintroduce native cutthroat trout. He's raising money and awareness for the project with the Carp Slam, a local flyfishing tournament for carp.

He's saving a rare strain of salmon in a novel way: by putting the fish up for adoption.
Mark Taylor, Everett, Wash.

"The Lake Sammamish kokanee salmon will be extinct within a decade if we don't help," says Taylor, president of the Washington Council of Trout Unlimited. He's devoted his life to saving those fish by restoring habitat and counting fry with the aid of students and Boy Scouts. He also places acoustic tags on adult salmon. To pay for it, he's started the "Adopt a Kokanee" program in which a $100 donation buys a picture of a tagged kokanee and updates of its movements, and $300 buys a trip to help catch and tag the fish in person. His hope is to get the fish classified as a distinct subspecies in need of protection.