Public Space: How Much Are You Willing to Pay to Mow a Lawn Nobody Uses?

I’ve written in the past about my volunteer work on my township’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC) advising the township commissioners and staff on environmental matters facing the township.  Historically, they have brushed off our advice.  In the last year or two, however, as some rather self-serving commissioners have cycled off of the board, the board has begun to become more open to the EAC’s suggestions. But there is still some progress to be made.

This is township-owned land that is regularly mowed but is almost never

used by neighbors for any recreational activities. (photo:Google Maps) 

One of the issues that I have been trying to get some action on over the past couple of years has been mowing of township open space properties. I’m not talking about active-use parks and sports fields, which are rightfully very well maintained. I’m talking about areas that the pubic does not actively use. The areas that would be best left as natural open spaces. For no other reason than, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” the township regularly mows township-owned fields throughout our 22-square mile municipality on a regular basis.  Some areas are mowed on a weekly basis and others a few times a season. The current Public Works regime insists on mowing so much land that the township parks crew is unable to do it all, so a mowing contractor is hired. The mowing contract has been a multi-year affair, to the tune of about $90,000 per year.  One of the most wasteful aspects about the mowing contract is that it requires mowing the designated areas on a weekly basis, regardless of whether they need it. So if an area is waterlogged from a week that saw 10 inches of rain, they mow grass that has standing water, often leaving ruts in the grass. Or if we are sweltering in early August without having seen more than half an inch of rain in the past 3 weeks, they mow the brown, crispy grass, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.  Not very picturesque.

Here's an example of the effort wasted on regularly mowing all open

space parcels. With this slope, this land is not usable for pick-up football

or other informal sporting activities. (photo:Google Maps)

Public Works justifies their mowing program by saying that they have some residents calling to complain when an area is allowed to revert to natural vegetation and is mowed just once annually to keep unwanted woody vegetation in check.  I would not be surprised if many of those callers are the same squeaky wheels that whine about having to pay property taxes to the township.

We can't have it both ways, though. We can't mow every township-owned parcel weekly, regardless of drought or rain-soaked ground, and then complain the township isn't maintaining pavilions and baseball dugouts in our parks. Unfortunately, the expectation in too many heads is that all public areas will be mowed and manicured to look the way that lawns look on TV. Unfortunately, Hollywood lawns often achieve their perfection with green spray paint and are about as genuine as many of their leading ladies.  Golf courses and major league ballparks have been painting their grass for years to avoid any perceived imperfections for their clientele with unrealistic expectations of perfect green turf.

The township feels a need to mow stormwater basins as perfectly as

they would their own front yards. More wasted effort.(photo:Google Maps)

But a municipality is not a business, and it should not try to compete with the appearance of the turf at golf courses and professional ballparks.  A municipality is supposed to maintain publicly owned lands so that they are safe and available for residents to enjoy in a reasonable manner. Mine does a good job maintaining our sports fields.  But  I do not think that driving past an unused  9-acre parcel and expecting it to look perfectly mowed for the 5 seconds you drive past it justifies spending $1,000 per year of taxpayer money mowing it.

This year should be the last for the current mowing contract. Hopefully, when the current commissioners consider the 2017 township budget, they will be decline to renew the mowing contract in favor of doing all mowing in-house and on a less frequent basis.  The best thing for these fields would be to replant them with native grasses and native wildflowers to become meadows that only need to be mowed once per year. Less mowing means cost savings for taxpayers.  And wildflowers and native grasses mean food for songbirds and pollinators. That is the kind of picturesque, low-impact habitat that I want my tax dollars supporting.

Rock Snot - Coming to a River Near You

Have you been concerned about didymo (a.k.a. "rock snot"), the algae that seems to be slowly taking over waterways throughout the northeast? A study from the University of New Brunswick, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, offers both good news and bad news about didymo’s spread.

Didymosphenia geminata (www.mdinvasivesp.org)

Didymo is an algae (technically, a diatom) that forms a dense mat on the bottom of swiftly flowing freshwater rivers and streams. As its nickname implies, it looks a bit like a thick, gooey layer of mucous covering the bottom of streams and rivers. It can smother other aquatic vegetation, reducing habitat for the aquatic macroinvertebrates that fish feed on. In the past two decades it has been identified in the waters of the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Europe.

First, the good news. Especially for anglers and boaters. Up until now, the conventional wisdom was that didymo was an exotic invasive algae species that was hitchhiking between watersheds on anglers’ gear, especially felt-soled wading boots, and on boats. State environmental agencies have launched intensive educational campaigns urging anglers and boaters to wash their gear and let it dry thoroughly to prevent further spread of didymo. Washing gear with a bleach solution was recommended. But according to the University of New Brunswick study, anglers and boaters are not spreading anything that was not already in their local ecosystems. So if anglers and boaters are not to blame for the ooze of algae popping up in more and more watersheds, what is going on? Sit tight for the bad news.

The didymo study looked at archival samples of lake sediment from several regions in Canada, and they found that didymo has been in these ecosystems for quite some time. Evidence of didymo can be found in the sediment record back to the beginning of the 20^th century and possibly even the last decade of the 19^th century. The researchers found that even in ecosystems which did not necessarily have evidence of didymo, there were increases in other algae species at approximately the same rate that didymo was increasing in lakes where it was present. The researchers found that increases in didymo and other algaes appeared to correlate with the warming climate. The study leader, Michelle Lavery, said, "We can't make any solid claims as to what the mechanism is that is favoring didymo, but we strongly suspect it has to do with climate." So although anglers and boaters seem to be off the hook for spreading didymo, the awakening of dormant didymo in bodies of water potentially throughout North America by a gradually warming mean global temperature would mean that we have little hope of preventing didymo from appearing in a river near you. That’s the bad news.

So does this new view of didymo mean that anglers and boaters don’t need to sweat about washing down their gear between destinations? No. There are other aquatic nuisance species that are much better understood than didymo that can hitchhike on our gear. Zebra mussels are one prominent example. So keep scrubbing down between trips.

I think the take-away message from this study is that didymo is still going to be a concern for those of us who rely on healthy and diverse waterways for our outdoor recreational fix. Although the indication is that anglers and boaters are not spreading it, this new study suggests that didymo may continue to appear throughout the waterways of the traditionally cooler regions of North America as long as the mean global temperature continues to inch up. I suspect that these findings mean that researchers can now focus their future didymo studies looking for ways to minimize inevitable didymo blooms under the assumption that it is already present but dormant in most aquatic ecosystems. And for anglers who will have to adapt to wading through dense patches of slippery rock snot? Maybe it’s time to invest in a wading staff.

Sources:

http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/newbrunswick/story/1.2554825

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/whats-causing-canadas-rock-snot-infestation

http://phys.org/news/2014-02-debunk-argument-invasive-algal-species.html

Save the Salmon: How Pebble Mine is Poised to Suck the Life Out of Bristol Bay

(photo credit: wildsalmoncenter.org)

I've been intending for the past several months to write a blog post about the looming crisis in Bristol Bay, Alaska.  The synopsis sounds like a classic Hollywood script pitting Native Americans and mom & pop commercial fishermen against an aggressive and well-connected mining company that sees Bristol Bay as an obstacle in their quest for mineral wealth.

The proposed Pebble Mine would be located on state lands in southwestern Alaska and, if built, would be the largest gold and copper mine in the world.  What is at stake is the water quality of the nearby Bristol Bay.  A recently released research report from the University of Alaska placed the annual value of the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery at $1.5 billion, making Bristol Bay the most valuable wild salmon fishery in the world. The same report also valued the direct annual income for Americans working in the Bristol Bay salmon industry at $580 million. Bristol Bay's salmon industry supports 7,800 full-time jobs, 12,000 seasonal jobs, and creates a positive ripple across the country when one considers the multiplier effects of distribution and retailing in grocery stores, restaurants, warehousing services, etc.

Native Alaskan drying salmon.
(photo credit: renewableresourcescoalition.org)

Aside from the dollar signs that swim around the Bristol Bay controversy, there is also a less flashy aspect to what is at stake.  There are thousands of Yupik Eskimo, Aleut and Athabaskan tribal members currently living in the Bristol Bay region and whose ancestors have been fishing these waters for thousands of years.  These Native Alaskans are subsistence fishermen, with wild salmon comprising an average of about 52 percent of their families' diets.  So it is not only sockeye salmon that rely on the clean water in Bristol Bay and its tributaries. 

Native Alaskan eating salmon. (photo credit: nrdconline.org)

As part of their review of the proposed mining operation, the EPA prepared an extensive scientific review, the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, detailing the potential impacts of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay, Alaska, region.

The mining company, the Pebble Partnership, is playing a high-stakes political game which, if they win, will have tragic adverse impacts on critical wildlife habitat in a region that relies on fishing and hunting tourism in addition to relying on the sockeye salmon fishery itself.  The EPA's Assessment found that even without a catastrophic spill or a series of harmful smaller spills, up to 87 miles of salmon streams and up to 4,300 acres of salmon habitat would be likely be destroyed by the proposed mining operation. Now try to wrap your head around this nugget:  the scale of the proposed mining operations would mean that up to 10 billion tons of toxic mine waste must be stored, treated, and monitored "in perpetuity."

Come on.  Who thinks for one minute that Pebble Partnership's investors would actually forgo a dime of profit to stash away billions of dollars to store, treat, and monitor their mining waste in perpetuity?   The U.S. Office of Surface Mining estimates that there are currently about 400,000 acres of abandoned mine lands in the United States.  “Abandoned” means that these former mine lands are waiting for federal tax dollars to become available to clean them up, because the mining companies that made the mess packed up and left, often shifting assets and filing for bankruptcy to avoid liability for the reclamation. The mining industry simply does not have an acceptable track record of sticking around to clean up after themselves.

Salmon spawning run. (photo credit: treehugger.com)

  As a Licensed Professional Geologist, I am acutely aware of the unavoidable adverse effects on surface water of even just a modest mining operation.  There is no doubt in my mind that the proposed Pebble Mine would irreversibly harm an economically important salmon fishery and the thousands of people whose livelihood depends on the health of that fishery.

The EPA holds a wild card in the form of the Clean Water Act.  The EPA can invoke the Clean Water Act to restrict inappropriate development activities such as the proposed Pebble Mine.   And the EPA is accepting public comment on their Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment until May 31.

So here it is, at the 11th hour.  This is my blog post in which I beg anyone reading to submit a comment to the EPA asking them to invoke the power of the Clean Water Act to prevent wholesale, large scale, irreversible damage to Bristol Bay's water quality and to give a break to all of the wildlife and people who rely on Bristol Bay's ecosystem for their survival.

Regardless of how far from Alaska you might live, our collective voices can be heard by the EPA:  Save Bristol Bay.  Here is a link that you can use to email your comment directly to the EPA on this critical situation:

http://takeaction.savebristolbay.org/savebristolbay/issues/alert/?alertid=62627501

(photo credit: counterpunch.org)

Time for Anglers and Hunters to be Represented in Congress and in the Media

I like to try to keep current on what other conservation bloggers are writing.  There are about six or eight conservation blogs that I try to follow.  Some of them keep me current on events or issues that I wouldn’t otherwise hear about.  Others sometimes give me a spark of inspiration for a future blog post here in Stream Hugger. Some do both.

A couple of days ago, I came across a post on the Trout Unlimited blog about a topic that I never read or heard reported in the mainstream media:  The Sportsmen's Act of 2012 (Senate Bill No. 3525).  This was a fully funded, bi-partisan piece of legislation that would have improved fish and game habitat throughout American and also would have improved accessibility of those habitats.  It would have boosted conservation on private lands and enhanced collaborative efforts between private conservation organizations (like TU) and state and federal agencies.  Would have. 

The 2012 legislative session came to a close without the Senate scheduling this bill for a vote, so the bill is now dead in it’s boots.

With looming fiscal cliffs filling the headlines of the mainstream media for the past month and hearings and press conferences about who knew what and when about the Benghazi attack, it’s easy to see how the Sportsmen’s Act could have gotten lost in the commotion on Capitol Hill over the past couple of weeks.  But passing legislation like the Sportsmen’s Act is kind of like putting a fresh coat of paint on your house.  It’s not fun, it’s not glamorous, but it has to be done periodically to preserve your investment.

Thanks to the foresight 100 years ago of conservation pioneers like Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir, the United States is rich with treasures of public lands that are open for sporting pursuits such as fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, kayaking, and birding.  Our public lands are a valuable asset that must be maintained just like our homes.  It’s easy to procrastinate painting our houses when other, unexpected bills arrive in our mailboxes.  But to procrastinate an over-due paint job on our dwelling for too many years in a row can be as injurious to our home as failing to maintain and make accessible the state and federal public lands that we all treasure.

As I pointed out in one of my posts a couple months ago, outdoor recreation activities annually contribute $646 billion in direct consumer spending to the U.S. economy.  This spending on outdoor activities and products supports 6.1 million jobs and generates $80 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue each year.  Being responsible for this kind of tax revenue, outdoor enthusiasts deserve to be better represented in Congress and in the mainstream media.

American anglers and hunters stand ready and willing to support a resurrected Sportsmen’s Act bill. We just need our leaders in Congress to step up and re-introduce the bill.  And we also need the mainstream media to pay attention to outdoor issues like this bill.  There are certainly enough Americans who enjoy outdoor recreation that a bill like the Sportsmen’s Act should be on the mainstream media’s radar and not limited to niche blogs like TU’s or mine.

Part of our national heritage:  the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.  I was fortunate to camp for two weeks in the Gros Ventre Wilderness Area within this National Forest in the mid-1990s. (photo credit:  U.S. Forest Service).

Just Say NO to Fly Fishing Snobbery

I suppose the subject of this particular blog post was what finally pushed me to start my blog last month.  You see, back on July 3, I read a post by Kirk Deeter on the Trout Unlimited (TU) blog that was titled:  Debate: Is fly fishing the most “noble” way to catch trout?

A little bit of background first.  Kirk Deeter is the editor of TU’s quarterly magazine, TROUT.  He is also an editor at large for Field & Stream magazine, is a frequent contributor to various outdoors websites and blogs, and has authored or co-authored a number of books about fishing.  So if anyone can ask the question, “Why is there an 800-pound gorilla on the bank of that stream using a spinning rod and live bait to catch trout?” … well, I think Kirk Deeter has the credibility as an outdoor journalist to ask that question.

Obviously, I have an opinion on the question that Kirk posed in his July 3 TU blog post.  So, naturally, I added my two cents to the comments that were beginning to accumulate at the bottom of Kirk’s post.  Of the 17 individuals (including myself) who posted comments on Kirk’s post, the comments unanimously favored not judging an individual’s preferred method of angling for trout. Great, that question is resolved.  Next item on the agenda?

Anyway, when I saw that the other 16 folks who commented on Kirk’s post felt similarly to me, I realized that my comment was nothing more than preaching to the choir.  The point that others and I were trying to make in our responses should give Kirk, the TU editor, important info that I hope he will share with the TU board of directors (because TU is often viewed by outsiders strictly as a fly fishing organization).  But other than that, it seemed to me that I had just wasted my time in adding my comment to the comments of the other 16 folks with like minds.  That’s when I realized that I needed to start my own blog that would, hopefully, reach a more diverse audience than the TU blog so that my thoughts about fishing and conservation and intelligent land use would be shared with a more heterogeneous audience, many of whom might not have otherwise thought about some of the stuff that I may write.  And thus, the Stream Hugger blog was conceived.

OK, back to my response to Kirk’s question.  In a nutshell, no.  Fly fishing is not the most noble means of angling for trout, nor is it anything more than a personal preference.  Frankly, sometimes when I’m trying to make a trout think that little bits of fur wrapped around a very small hook is a real bug, and the fish are not the least bit fooled, I feel like fly fishing may be the most masochistic means of angling for trout.  The following two paragraphs are what I posted in response to Kirk’s question.

There's a time and a place for any method of fishing.  My dad didn't fish, but my interest in learning how to fish was helped along by a neighbor who taught me spin casting live bait for channel catfish and the occasional smallmouth bass in the Schuylkill River near Valley Forge, PA.  By the time I was old enough to need a fishing license, I had graduated to tossing Panther Martins and Rooster Tails with a spinning rod.  Fly fishing always seemed too esoteric without an adult role model to watch and teach it to me.  Besides, the gear was a lot more expensive.  But I always knew that my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born, was a fly fisherman.  So I guess I was always a little curious about how in the world someone could toss a feather on a hook exactly where they wanted it 40 feet away.

Fast forward 30 or so years, and I'm now trying to teach my 9-year-old daughter how to fish.  She has no patience (not the kind needed for tying a tiny fly to a tippet and standing in one spot for 15 minutes or more), so, by necessity, I'm teaching her how to fish live bait (or Powerbait) with a spinning rod.  It doesn't seem like there will be any way she'll be ready to try to fly fish anytime in the next several years.  But I am very proud to say that she has always had a natural knack for casting a spinning rod.  The only problem with me taking her fishing is that she needs me nearby to guide her, which makes it nearly impossible for me to fly fish if she is on the stream with me.  But the most important thing to me is that she is interested in fishing and in coldwater conservation, and it's my hope that one day she'll become curious enough to ask to try to cast my fly rod and follow in the steps of her dad and her great-grandpop.  Whatever kind of gear that is necessary to keep a kid from getting discouraged while learning how to fish is the right kind of gear.

Trout Unlimited’s motto is, “Conserving, protecting and restoring North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.”  There is no mandate within TU that says the organization must cater to fly anglers or that it must necessarily exclude live-bait or gear anglers.  The goal of TU is coldwater conservation.

My grandfather, Eli Hendricks, with a bait-casting rod & reel, sometime in the 1940s or early 1950s.

The reality is that the more anglers there are with an interest in coldwater conservation, the better chance we all have of convincing regulators and elected officials of the need to protect and restore our favorite coldwater fisheries.  Fishing a coldwater trout stream can be a meditative and restorative experience for an angler, whether it’s with mealworms, Powerbait, a Mepps Black Fury spinner, or a Sulfur Dun dry fly.  It doesn’t matter what kind of gear we use when we get out on the water to try to match wits with the local trout.  What matters is that all anglers stick together and ally ourselves with other outdoor enthusiasts to protect and restore our waterways for future generations so that our kids will have the opportunity to follow in our rippling footsteps in the same coldwater streams that we currently call our home waters.

My daughter using a spinning rod & reel with Powerbait to fish for trout in 2012.