There’s nothing like a little habitat destruction to ruin an otherwise great day of stream fishing. 

Pictured above is what’s left of a section of stream that I caught dozens of fish in this past year.  Now, it’s nothing but a wide, shallow run with no cover or other fish habitat remaining.  The landowner took a bulldozer in the stream and completely obliterated this stretch, pushing all of the stream material into large banks at the stream’s edge.

I’m assuming that whoever decided to do this to the stream intended to prevent bank erosion in a camping area, and may not have realized the damage they were doing to the stream by destroying trout habitat.  This stretch once had contained undercut banks, a nice deep pool, and numerous rocks and trees used for cover and holding habitat by trout. 

It’s now just a wide, shallow stretch of gravel, and I was unable to locate any fish in the area.

It’s hard to believe that activities like this are still going on in the 21st century.  We should know better.  We’re spending millions of dollars to work on stream restoration and some yahoo can go into a stream with a dozer for a couple of hours and completely ruin a great stretch of trout stream. 

I spoke to a local biologist about the situation, and it sounds like Utah state law doesn’t give them much leverage to stop things like this from happening.  Still, I think there should be better communication between landowners and biologists concerning fish habitat.

I’d like to think that if the landowners were aware of the damage they were doing, they would voluntarily take measures to preserve trout habitat, but that remains to be seen. 

The federal Bureau of Reclamation accidentally caused a huge fish kill in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta recently while draining water to perform repair on a levee.  After draining water, fish started floating belly-up on the surface in hordes, to the point where a local marina owner estimated fish losses to be in the tens of thousands. 

This came after a U.S. Fish and Wildlife study that predicted no significant impact on populations of endangered delta smelt.  The California Department of Fish and Game is investigating the losses.   

See the story here

Michigan’s famed trout stream, the Au Sable River, is the topic of recent controversy over a proposed state Senate bill that could allow water users to withdraw large amounts of water for irrigation and other uses.

Angling and environmental groups are concerned about the potential ramifications of the bill, which they say could reduce the flows of the Au Sable and surrounding trout streams by over 20%, which might be expected to have a negative effect on trout populations.

Patty Birkholz, R-Saugatuck, states that such numbers are grossly overestimated, and the effects would be far less.

So who’s right?  Hard to know, but I’d think someone would have thought this one out and come up with some reliable estimates, considering the immense value of the Au Sable trout fishery.  While I don’t know much about the issue, I think a bill that included the recommendation of fishery managers when considering water withdrawal might be a wiser choice.

Read the story here

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, mining company Purco Coal, Inc. installed drain pipes from their mine to a nearby quality trout stream on state land. 

Trout Unlimited and the Pennsylvania DEP are now demanding that the company fix the pollution problem and pay restitution to the state, or face harsher penalties.

Read more here

San Diego area citizen Allen Greenwood doesn’t want to see another native strain of rainbow trout go extinct.  The San Diego fires have threatened the native rainbow trout of Pauma Creek, and Greenwood has requested that the California Department of Fish and Game do something to save the trout that have survived the fires, before winter rains flush ash and sediment into the streams.

 Read more here 

The Deseret Morning News reports that Utah officials have found dangerously high levels of PCB’s in two species of Utah Lake fish, carp and channel catfish.  Utah Lake is the largest freshwater lake in the state of Utah, and contains a number of other fish species, including black bullhead, white bass, and walleye, which tested safe. 

PCB’s were once used for industrial purposes and were banned in the U.S. in the late 1970’s, but often show up in the environment even today.  They are toxic and believed to cause cancer.  Officials have recommended fish consumption limits for the two contaminated species. 

Nat Gillespie, fisheries scientist with Trout Unlimited, recently wrote an article on the threat culverts pose on survival of brook trout throughout their native range.  Hundreds of thousands of culverts have the potential to block fish movement because they’re oftentimes poorly placed and alter the natural flow regime of a stream. 

While suitable habitat may exist both above and below a culvert, and many fish populations thrive despite such a barrier, movement plays an important part in the long term persistence of healthy fish populations.  Free movement along the length of a stream system allows fish to recolonize areas where populations may have been reduced or are threatened by human impacts or environmental factors.  Fish that move upstream into headwaters to spawn, such as anadromous salmon, have their habitat significantly reduced when a new culvert presents an additional barrier.

Many biologists and members of the public are just beginning to realize the importance of fish passage through culverts, and this is shown in the push to install more fish-friendly culverts, or bridges as an alternative. 

Read the full article here

In an era of increasing concern for fish species and habitat restoration, the search for renewable energy can often conflict with the best interest of fish.

Seven new hydro plants are in the planning stages in Scotland, in an effort by the country to move to more renewable sources of energy.  It’s hard to understand why such development is being considered in Scotland while Americans are spending tons of money to remove dams because of their effects on fish.  The hydropower plans are opposed solely because of concerns for the Atlantic salmon and brown trout populations they have the potential to effect.  Dams are known to impede, and sometimes completely eliminate upstream migration of fish, and anadromous fish such as Atlantic salmon need to move upstream from the ocean to spawn. 

See the story here

While dams can benefit anglers in certain situations (especially in streams where migration is not necessary to support a fish population), and can provide substantial benefits to the public, they can often cause significant damage.  To support such development, I think the conservationist and angler alike should be confident that the designs of such dams result in minimal impacts to fish populations.  Furthermore, I think alternative sources of energy should be further pursued (such as wood biomass, wind power, solar power, and nuclear power) if the public is seeking a replacement for traditional energy generation.

A recent story in USA Today describes a controversy between recreational gold miners and fisheries conservationists in the state of California.  The debate has been sparked by a bill in the California state Assembly that would allow wildife managers to ban gold dredging in sensitive rivers and streams, in order to protect salmon.  I felt the story was fairly well written, and explains the views from both sides of the issue.

See the story here

Coming from an area with no gold mining history, I’ve often pondered what it might be like to get out in search for gold.  I got my chance when I moved out West, and decided I would try the recreational mining myself.

At first, when I heard about gold dredging, bad images instantly came to mind.  I thought about entire stream bottoms being sucked away, banks being eroded, and fish habitat being destroyed in the process.  These were all things that bothered me, because while I had a strong desire to search for gold, I was a fish geek…….and didn’t want to see fish populations being affected in pursuit of this intriguing yet obscure sport.

You might be surprised to find that over time, this fish geek changed his mind about recreational gold dredging.

I should provide a little background on recreational gold dredging.  This type of dredging is most often performed by an individual clad in wetsuit and diving gear, who kneels at the river bottom and holds a suction hose, which pulls gravel and sand from the riverbed up through the hose and across a sluice box setting on top of pontoons at the water surface.  As gravel and water flows over the sluice box, heavier materials such as gold are caught in the riffles of the sluice, and later sorted out by the miner.  The suction through the hose is powered by a small generator which sits on the pontoons, and the sand and gravel flowing through the sluice box usually settle back to the river bottom between a few feet and a few hundred feet downstream of their origin. 

I spoke to a number of recreational dredgers in my search for gold in central Idaho, partially because of my concern for the fish.  One of the most surprising responses to my questions about the effects on fish was that these guys routinely have fish swimming all around them while they dredge!  Dredging stirs up bottom materials, which contain aquatic insects, so the fish gather around the dredge hole to feed, and the fish don’t have any problem avoiding entrainment into the suction hose either.  Oftentimes these dredge holes (which are around throughout the summer, until being filled back in the spring during high water flows) provide habitat for fish during the warm summer months as well. 

Another one of my surprises was the relatively small area that can be dredged by a single person over time, and the incredible resiliency of the river to return to its former state.  The vast majority of dredge holes are filled up after spring flows, and gravel in the river redistributes itself so that most of the time, a year later, you can’t even tell an area was dredged. 

While the word dredging often conjures up disturbing images in people’s minds, if you take a look at the research, surprisingly little effects on fish populations can be found.  This came as a huge surprise for me, since I figured that dredging must be harmful to fish.  Take a look at the literature on the following web page: Suction Dredging and the Environment.  Granted, this page is run by a mining supply company, so any paper stating that suction dredging is harmful might be left out, but I would challenge you to look up all available literature on suction dredging.  I’m confident that an overwhelming majority of the studies fail to show an effect. 

That being said, I failed to mention that I am speaking of suction dredging done under typical conditions during specific seasons (the current status quo in most areas).  I would be foolish to say that suction dredging doesn’t have an effect on spawning redds, or fish eggs that are incubating in the gravel, since dredging effectively removes the gravel, and would likely destroy eggs sucked up from redds.  In streams where fish spawn in the spring, dredging is usually limited to specific seasons (I believe it begins June 1st in many areas, for example), to allow for incubating eggs to hatch and for fry to swim out of the gravel and into the water column, where they can avoid disturbance.  If dredging only begins after fish hatch from the gravel, and ends before redds are constructed, I am not convinced that it has any significant effect on fish populations or habitat.  The incredible dynamics of stream systems involve the flushing of sediments downstream during high flows, which redistributes gravel, and in my opinion, likely masks the effects of dredging.   Furthermore, many areas lack the redisribution of gravel downstream due to the changing flow patterns resulting from dams.  In some cases, dredging can help loosen the gravel and make it easier for trout and salmon to dig spawning redds. 

If you’ve read this blog before, you know that I don’t like regulations that aren’t based on science.  I would encourage anyone who has an interest to read up on recreational suction gold dredging.  Go beyond the opinion pieces from special interest groups, and look at the primary, peer reviewed literature.  I think the facts will show that a common sense approach to recreational gold dredging, with seasonal protections for fish, promotes economic well being and recreation, and does not pose a threat to fish populations. 

Remember the story about a road closure in a Washington wilderness area due to bull trout presence? 

Well a similar story has shown up in the news recently with some controversy over whether or not the National Park Service should re-build a severely flooded section of the Carbon Road, which usually sees about 100,000 visitors each year.

See the story here