The Prairie Dells dam, nine miles from the river's confluence with the upper Wisconsin, had been rebuilt for hydro power in 1904 when it was already 24 years old. ![]() Now, released from its four dams, it's fast regaining its former status. The Prairie River, which in 1944 produced Wisconsin's record inland brook trout of nine pounds, 15 ounces, was arguably the best trout stream in the state. Dam removal is about life, not death, rebirth not destruction. Today the energy flow of the freed Baraboo is increasing geometrically from Hillsboro to the Wisconsin River, through 120 miles of mainstem and up into hundreds of tributaries veining the slopes of the 650-square-mile basin, out and up into meadow, muskeg, forest and sky-to the muskrats that eat the mussels, the owls, weasels, bobcats and wild canids that eat the muskrats, to the otters, eagles, ospreys, herons, kingfishers, turtles and snakes that eat the fish, to the salamanders, frogs, bats and woods warblers that eat the clouds of aquatic insects. And with all the fish have come mussels which, as larvae, migrate through the system by temporarily attaching to fins and gills. With the species sought by anglers have come lake sturgeon, paddlefish, darters and the giant native sucker called bigmouth buffalo-all moving freely, breeding in restored habitat, feeding gamefish with their eggs and fry. Now caddisflies and mayflies dominate cool, oxygenated riffles newly cleansed of sediment. In the tepid, eutrophic impoundments midges, sludge worms and bloodworms had dominated benthic fauna. Of course, there would be no recovery of Baraboo gamefish without recovery of the complex ecosystem of which they are part. Largemouths evolved in still water but they're doing far better in the free Baraboo than they were in the impoundments because they're no longer suppressed by carp. Although smallmouths may thrive in lakes and large reservoirs, they do best in rivers because that's where they evolved. ![]() Recovery has barely gotten underway and already the unshackled Baraboo's smallmouths are drawing national attention. ![]() Before the demise of the Waterworks dam the crews had shocked three smallmouths 18 months after removal they shocked 87. Eighteen months after the dams were taken out the crews shocked 24 species above the remains of the Waterworks dam and 26 species above the remains of LaValle, and in both cases the dominant species was smallmouth bass. Crews from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had shocked 11 fish species above the Waterworks and LaValle dams, the dominant one being carp. When the last of these dams was removed in February 2001 (making the Baraboo the longest river freed by dam busting in the nation), both bass species, as well as catfish, walleye and sauger, surged back in numbers that astonished even state biologists. For example, in Wisconsin-which leads the nation in dam removal-anglers caught smallmouth and largemouth bass in the impoundments above the four dams on the Baraboo River, but the fishing was pretty lousy. But most impoundments are mongrels, possessing neither riverine nor lacustrine characteristics and while they may support organisms that evolved in both environments, they support neither well. Impoundments behind large dams, most of which are unlikely to be removed in the foreseeable future, can stratify and take on the ecological features of genuine lakes. A dam's average life expectancy is 50 years, and a quarter of America's 76,000 dams defined by the Corps of Engineers as "large-" or "high-hazard" (in which failure is apt to kill people) are more than 50 years old. As yet, however, there is no such acceptance by the general public, a fact that should alarm all thinking Americans regardless of how they feel about fish and wildlife. ![]() Today the notion that dams are not sacred monuments to be preserved for all time is universally accepted by state and federal agencies.
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