(From “Diaries...) Bad Movie Scene Feb 15: The tributary I’m on today reminds me of a bad scene from the movie Waterworld. There are wild-looking crazies everywhere on grunting, grinding machines. But they’re not aboard jet skis; they are all driving another wondrous little invention–the ATV (all-terrain vehicle). The noisy machines are hauling crews of tree-planters and buckets of tree seedlings. Fortunately, everyone is engrossed in their mission and they fail to notice me wading slowly upstream in the shadows of riparian vegetation. Within a two-mile reach, I have recorded them plowing (or as evidenced by their tracks, having recently done so) across the stream in at least a dozen places. Sadly, most such crossings are right through potential steelhead spawning habitat–the often-favored (by both man and fish) tail-out areas of pools. Every such stream crossing technically constitutes one or more violations–of both the Endangered Species Act (e.g., restrictions against “take”) and various Department of Fish and Game streambed-protection regulations. But the potential violations are soon seen to be irrelevant. As I watch, a thick bed-load of pure white sand oozes, like a big snake, slowly down the channel bottom in front of me. Its message is clear: quick death (by smothering) to the eggs of any self-respecting salmon or steelhead that attempts spawning here! Unfortunately, that’s not all I find depressing. This reach has been degraded like this for at least the 30-plus years I’ve been passing nearby during angling trips (by drift-boat) down the main river channel.