foxtrapper1972 wrote:
Almost all the streams in my area have been dewatered over the years. Not much left but a trickle in some. Seems the fish comm and gov't agencies would rather run around spending grant money on questionable "improvement" projects than actually addressing REAL issues facing our waterways.
By the way I've heard the project over at Big Springs may not be such a success as I had hoped. Apparently a lot less big fish these days. I know last time I was over there were VERY FEW big fish to be seen in the ditch and a few of the larger ones I saw/spooked down below didn't look all that healthy.
I don't think anyone is really being held accountable for any of these projects. DO THEY REALLY WORK? Results? Studies? Any real evidence?
While I agree that there should be an evaluation component of stream improvement (was there value gained for the dollars invested), how exactly do you propose going about addressing "REAL" issues? Should we restore old growth forest that was cut hundreds of years ago and is now prime farm land (which becomes prime development land)? Move out of Lancaster County and wait a couple hundred years to move back? Stop eating, so the agricultural lands can revert to forest? We've fundamentally altered the landscape here in Lancaster County and you can grumble all you want from your ivory tower about that, and about stream deimprovements, but sometimes, an organization has to take a pragmatic approach and do something with what they've got, which in the case of Lancaster County is a lot of impaired streams.
You cited Donegal as a stream where improvements were done and money spent, but now stocking has resumed, because the wild fish have decreased. What is your evidence (published and peer reviewed, preferably), that the improvements were the reason the wild fish declined? Maybe those improvements were just enough to let the wild fish to get a foot hold. Maybe the ebb and flow of wild fish has more to do with water levels and the drawdown of the aquifer from all the development and the fluctuation in sediment is due to the timing and nature of the weather in a given season and how the weather might impact runoff on freshly tilled fields? And how many heavy rain events we get that either wash sediment into a stream, or flush it out of the stream? And as far as I know, they never stopped stocking Donegal. The PFBC eliminated a fall stocking in the FFO area and they had a failed experiment with fingerling stocking, but DFCA continued to stocking outside the FFO area during that time. The stream had reached Class A biomass in one shocking but the population crashed by the next shocking, but the reasons for that crash are not known (other than fish populations fluctuate).
Not real evidence, per se, but I find wild fish in streams around the state that have what I believe are really old stream improvements, in that as far as I know, those streams have not been stocked in my lifetime. Somewhere, sometime, some apparently backward thinking individual or organization took some time to try to do something to the stream. I'd never try to advance that the reason wild trout are in those streams is because of that work, but maybe one of the variables that helped trout survive in those streams is the little bit of extra cover they created, or the marginal increase in habitat they afforded.
Here's an idea. Maybe you should apply for a grant to study the stream improvement grants. Publish your results, and like all good scientific literature, we'll critique, I mean peer review your study.
