Construction of the side channel with fish-friendly screens is a major step toward someday enabling Lahontan cutthroat trout to make the same 100-mile (160-kilometre) journey — upstream from a desert lake on tribal land northeast of Reno to Lake Tahoe atop the Sierra — that they did before the dam was built in 1905. “This is a great day for conservation,” said Paul Souza, the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who said it wouldn’t have been possible without support from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “This is an iconic species. This project is going to help get it home,” he said at a ceremony Wednesday at Derby Dam on the Truckee River 20 miles (32 kilometres) east of Reno.