The Trail Less Traveled

As the Northwest Regional Director, Sarah Dyrdahl leads the regional team working to protect wild rivers, restore damaged rivers, and conserve clean water for people and nature in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. This is part one of our two part series featuring the work of American Rivers. Sarah has been working with communities on river conservation and restoration in Alaska and Oregon since 2004, as a staff biologist for a Native Alaskan Tribe and 15 years as a restoration program manager, and then executive director, for Oregon watershed councils. Most recently, Sarah served as the aquatic & riparian specialist and interim deputy division chief for the Oregon Department of Forestry. Before migrating upstream to freshwater ecosystems, Sarah studied nearshore marine ecological communities along the Oregon Coast with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). Sarah grew up in the country, on the banks of the Applegate River in southern Oregon, an experience that she