Just a few years into my residency in the Hazleton area, I
partnered with an enduring friend to form what we nonchalantly called the
Friends of the Nescopeck. We didn’t have a treasury or nonprofit status from
the IRS, or even a snail-mail address. But we had a mission – to gather data
that might ultimately lead to a cleanup plan for a big mistake of the past.
We collected water samples – weekly – from collection sites
throughout the Nescopeck Creek watershed; ranging as far downstream as
Nescopeck borough. On one memorable day, I got my first glance at the mouth of
the Jeddo Mine Tunnel. It’s an engineering marvel, for sure, but the death
knell for miles and miles of downstream waterways and their aquatic life.
We poked around quite a bit that day in Butler Township;
admiring the relatively clean water of a beaver-created pond next to the
outfall channel of the heavily polluted tunnel discharge waterway.
And then we rambled upstream – the Little Nescopeck Creek –
just to get a look at the general quality of the riparian woods and the creek’s
water.
Well, well, I recall saying. Below me, at a point where the
creek is barely six feet from bank to bank, swam a real honest-to-gosh Brook
Trout. Two decades later, the merger of Jeddo water with the creek Mother
Nature created remains the end-point for trout in the Little Nescopeck.
The Brookie is the only trout that’s
really, truly, native to much of the Applachian region, from Georgia north to
Maine and on up into the coastal provinces of Canada.
And even now, after long-ago
realization of what makes a creek, run or river right for this coldwater-loving
fish, the future is tenuous for the Brook Trout.
The effects of acid mine drainage,
while ugly in their own right, pale when considered alongside the wholesale
loss of coldwater systems throughout the East.
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“In collaboration with many conservation organizations,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed and released an ambitious
strategy for responding to accelerating climate change and addressing its
impact on critters like brook trout. The Service and joint venture are
working on a climate change monitoring program, targeting 400 sites aimed at
taking a closer look at how air and water temperatures impact brook trout.”
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The single most important factor
affecting brook trout is water temperature, which is why biologists are
concerned about this species as climate change accelerates. Brook trout
thrive in water temperatures of 65 degrees Fahrenheit or less. They will die
after only a few hours in water temperatures of 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just as it is for migratory
songbirds, a key to trout population survival is high-quality habitat.
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The FWS again: “Fragmented populations,
habitat loss, invasive species, degraded streams, longer droughts, more intense
wet periods, and temperature changes have some of the best coldwater fisheries
biologists joining forces to ensure these trout survive for the next generation
of anglers.
“We are not trying to prove what causes
climate change one way or another,” says Mark Hudy, a coldwater fisheries
biologist for the U.S. Forest Service based at James Madison University. “We
are trying to determine what management actions we can take to make the trout
more resilient to the changes we are seeing. Bottom line is that the current
distribution of brook trout will change.”
Climate change’s unpredictability poses
unique challenges. How to address changes in precipitation remains a concern,
according to Doug Besler, a coldwater fisheries biologist for the North
Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.
“We might get the same amount of
precipitation annually, but what if it comes in bunches at times of the year
that aren’t considered normal? That’s one of the many things we worry
about because it’s very hard to plan for that kind of unpredictability,” Besler
says.
Other questions remain unanswered.
“Some of these changes are going to
affect these fish and their habitat in ways we cannot imagine today,” says
Steve Moore, lead fisheries biologist for the National Park Service in the
Smokies. “What if the normal stream temperature goes from 62 degrees to
65 or 66 degrees? We don’t know the answer to that one."
Many times while living in Conyngham,
my Sheltie Kestrel and I stood near the Little Nescopeck where it flows past
the edge of Whispering Willows Park in the borough. No trout in that water. But
chattering Gray Squirrels nearby kept the dog’s attention.
Are we going to repeat the Jeddo Tunnel
mistake again by altering our planet’s climate?
Learn more at www.fws.gov/northeast/fisheries/pdf/EBTJV_Conservation_Strategy_July08.pdf
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