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If
you see Fred Reimherr on a downtown Salt Lake street, don't worry - he's not
homeless. Yes, his head is a big wad of tousled red hair that merges with a
scruffy, bushy beard. Yes, he's wearing a pair of old hiking shorts and a worn
flannel shin. But if he looks disheveled it's probably because he's been riding
his bicycle for several miles and has that windblown look.
Reimherr actually has a house, vehicles, a wife and children. But he prefers to keep life as simple as is feasible in a pretty complicated world. So his bike is transportation to work and around town, even in the winter. "With today's gear, you can keep riding all but a very few days when the snow is too deep," he says. His dress and lifestyle are pretty casual. He prefers to make as little impact as possible on his surroundings.
In case you haven't guessed by now, Reimherr is a pretty interesting guy. He's also a little hard to figure. It's tough to get inside his head. His answers to questions are pretty standard at first. An interviewer has to work hard to drag out any deep insights or revealing anecdotes.
Maybe it's because Reimherr knows all the tricks. He's pretty good at asking the questions himself. With his non-committal answers and understated demeanour you wonder what he's thinking. You almost have to ask yourself, "Is he analyzing me?"
Reimherr is a psychiatrist and a very good one. He runs the Mood Disorders Clinic at the University of Utah Medical Center, where he does a variety of psychiatric research, sees patients and lectures on psychiatry to medical students.
He's also a fisherman, and a very good one. He started fishing as a youngster in a small town in Pennsylvania and has continued ever since. He's one of the long-time members of the Stonefly Society, a Salt Lake fly fishing club associated with Trout Unlimited. He usually fishes a nymph under a dry fly and he can coax a nice brown out of the Green River about as well as anyone.
But more than fisherman, Reimherr is a conservationist, one of Utah's most dedicated. While he's not flashy and would just as soon stay behind the scenes, very few Utahns have been as consistent diligent and committed to the environment as Reimherr.
His single-minded passion is rivers, keeping the state's streams running clear and pure and as full as possible. For more than 20 years he's been fighting for Utah's rivers. That pursuit is actually more important to him than fishing. While many people are fishers first and conservationists second, for Reimherr the reverse is true. He's not out to save rivers just to improve fishing. He's out to save rivers because he believes they must be saved. The fishing community provides a lot of allies, but fishing is secondary.
"I really enjoy fishing but rivers are what's important to me. Flowing water has a magic to it. When I'm floating a river, I'm just as happy rowing as fishing. I've had stunning days on the Green where catching a fish just enhanced the enjoyment of an already-great experience. I actually spend more time on conservation issues than I do fishing,"
His work protecting rivers and streams has certainly not been glamorous. Much of the effort entails poring over dry, detailed and highly complex government and utility company reports and environmental impact statements. It involves staying abreast of arcane laws and regulations governing water rights and allocation. It means understanding the labyrinth of overlapping jurisdictions that use and control Utah’s water, including private users and irrigation and culinary districts.
It means measuring success and defeats in very small degrees. It means being very patient, understanding that we’re talking about generational change, not quick victories.
Luckily, Reimherr is in it for the long haul. He’s been fighting the good fight since the ‘70s and shows no sign of letting up. And he actually sees some progress, though much more remains to be done. To call him optimistic about the future would be a bit of a stretch, but he believes attitudes are changing and Utahns are valuing rivers, wild places and the environment in general more than ever.
He thinks Utah’s don’t really know how good they have it and might take things for granted a little too much. "Utah has destroyed better trout streams than Pennsylvania ever had, and didn’t even realize what they were doing," Reimherr said. "It’s a strange paradox: we value water here so much, yet we waste it and don’t respect it as we should."
Reimherr started like many anglers do, with bait and spin fishing on small creeks and ponds in Pennsylvania. He quickly evolved to fly fishing because that was the most popular fishing technique in the area. His father taught at a small Pennsylvania college and he enjoyed a typical small-town childhood.
He grew up during the turbulent ‘60s and his laidback, peaceful outlook on life may have been shaped in part by attending a Quaker college and medical school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, during the Vietnam War.
Part way through medical school, he and his wife took a trip out West, and he was amazed at the gorgeous streams and wild country he saw in Montana. He decided he wanted to live in the West. The University of Utah Medical Center offered an internship and residency, and he’s been here ever since.
Reimherr is a practical conservationist. He’s no bomb-thrower like some environmental activists, and he doesn’t try to embarrass opponents or stage dramatic media events. He works through the system and doesn’t think compromise is a dirty word.
Much as he wishes Utahns would value flowing water more, he understands why things are as they are. "In the East there is a greater degree of reverence for wild places and pure rivers because they don’t have as much," he said. And Utah attitudes are not unique. "It’s the same in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Idaho," he said.
"The history of the West has been to divert and dam the streams. Use the water up. I had a patient, a farmer from Colorado’s west slope, who told me he literally felt defeated if any water made it past his property. He felt a good job was using it all up."
"It’s actually a strange paradox. I don’t doubt that Utahns and westerners value water. But that value is expressed in diverting and using it up, rather than letting it flow. Using it up means dewatered streams, reduced wetlands and not as much wildlife"
Stream dewatering is one of Reimherr's pet peeves. A second is overgrazing along streambeds and destruction of riparian corridors. Such destruction means long-terms damage even to farming interests, Reimherr said. He can point out stream after stream - the Bear, the Sevier, the Weber, portions of the Provo, the Spanish Fork, and so on - where stream bank damage, often from overgrazing, has led to terrible erosion, streams cutting deeply into the soil, lowering the water table and drying up valuable pastures and grassland.
Utah would have hundreds of miles more of great stream habitat for fish and wildlife if cattle were fenced out of the streams and the streams restored with gently sloping, grassy and willowly banks.
In rural valleys, we'd have wide, lush river corridors with grass and trees and streams with rocky bottoms suitable for trout spawning, Reimherr says. There would be more grass for livestock, and spring runoff and flooding would not be nearly as damaging.
Reimherr believes there are long-term solutions to riparian destruction that could be beneficial to all concerned. Farmers and ranchers willing to keep the livestock out of the rivers and help with stream restoration could receive fees from anglers for access to their property.
Farmers could improve their pastures and croplands with healthy streams, plus add new revenues to their farming operations. Anglers could have access to many more miles of good fishing. Natural spawning could increase, lessening the need for hatchery-produced fish. "I believe it's fair for landowners to expect incentives to do these things. Some people don't like the idea of memberships or access fees, but that can be part of the solution."
Reimherr says the climate is improving for such discussions and activities among farmers, the Division of Wildlife Resources, sportsmen's groups and environmental groups, but there's yet a long way to go. The DWR has programs that could help a great deal, but much more education is needed to make them work.
Utah water law also needs re-working, Reimherr believes. Utah is no longer a mostly agricultural state, yet water law remains firmly rooted in that era. Hobby farmers and even backyard gardeners control too much water and provisions are needed to allow water shares to be transferred more easily and used for permanent in-stream flows.
Even with Utah's growing population, there's enough water for both culinary use and healthy streams if marginal agricultural use could be curtailed and good conservation practices adopted, Reimherr believes. It's insane that water is still being diverted from streams and run down ditches into downtown Salt Lake City so a few people can flood their lawns. Most of it is wasted, he contends.
"Think of it as tithing," he suggested. "If we left a minimum of 10 percent of the water in the streambeds, it would make a big difference in some systems. A certain part of the water needs to belong to the river."
Reimherr would also like to see other environmental groups focus more on water. Some groups, like the Sierra Club, have been slow to appreciate the central importance of water. It's easier to talk about wilderness. But water, wetlands, and riparian corridors mean more to wildlife than any wilderness issues, he argues.
For anyone interested in conservation issues who wants to make a difference, Reimherr suggests joining an association like the Stonefly Society or other group. Much more is accomplished by people working together than by individuals going it alone.
Asked to list some favorite rivers, Reimherr names the Delores in southwestern Colorado. "It's got to be one of the most beautiful rivers in the West. It's special. The Price River is great, and I really like the Yampa. There are northems in the Yampa that go 35-40 pounds. I hooked one and got a glimpse of him. He was so powerful. He headed up river and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I've also had wonderful days on the Green."
A few years ago Reimherr went to England and discovered that the English like longer fly rods. He bought a 10- foot, six-inch rod for use on open water. "It's been a joy to use. When I really need to mend and reach it's ideal. If you look in an English fishing catalog you'll see a lot of longer rods from Sage and Orvis that they don't even sell in this country."
Besides fishing and biking, Reimherr loves hiking and photography. "I just enjoy being outdoors. Sometimes when I take my camera I forget about fishing." He especially likes Utah's canyon country in the winter. He's hiked up the Virgin River Gorge in the winter and has photos of upper Calf Creek Falls framed with icicles.
So if you see a scruffy, red-haired guy pedaling a bike among the red cliffs... it's not Seldom Seen Smith or Hayduke or some other character out of an Edward Abbey novel. It's just Fred Reimherr doing what he does.
Published June/July 1999 UTAH OUTDOORS
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