An official says efforts to restore the trout population in the Batten Kill in Arlington appear to be working.
Cynthia Browning of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance says that on Thursday a biologist for the state of Vermont conducted a fish count of a section of the river and early results were encouraging.
For the last two years biologists and private groups have been working to restore trout habitat on the world famous trout stream, which in recent years saw a decline of about 70 percent.
A key to the program has been to restore vegetation along the river bank and to provide places in the river where small trout can hide from predators
Testing last year showed that in some areas trout populations were up 600 percent.