It’s a curious thing, teaching a classroom of future fish conservationists about revitalizing degraded ecosystems. Putah Creek was an unconventional place to teach ecology. After the creek turned bad, it stayed that way for decades – deteriorated habitat, nonexistent flow, garbage, rusted cars, even gravel mining. And while conditions have improved, many students, and even some scientists, still remain skeptical that this ecosystem could ever be anything but a spoilt ecosystem. Is it really possible to genuinely rehabilitate an ecosystem like that through improved management and community building? Those lessons work in other cases, for other ecosystems, but surely not this one.