Ten Most Endangered Rivers

 Acid Mine Drainage

Human impacts on rivers know no regional boundaries. River systems in the North, South, East, and West are all impacted by human actions. Coal mining, acid mine drainage, copper mining, sewage, etc. Its amazing there are any fish left at all!!!!

For the list of the ten most endangered rivers, click here.

"Fracking"

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is in the news again. This practice, designed to extract natural gas by injecting water and often unregulated chemicals deep into the ground, is increasingly implicated in creating toxic pollutions in wells. Fracking not only impacts trout, but the people who live around trout. Very few states regulate this practice, thus giving natural gas interests a free pass when it comes to the environment. I have a feeling we'll look back on this practice and ask "what the hell were we thinking?"

See NY Times article here:  Fracking

The human cost of mountain top removal

Those of us in the conservation world usually focus on the environmental impacts of coal mining, but there is also a human side. And similar to the fish, this side is tragic:

Town Disappears Along With The Mountain

Maine Judge Rejects Plum Creek

This is good news for brook trout in Maine, and good news for anyone who doesn't want to see the North Woods chopped up into 1 acre house lots: Sorry Plum Creek

New Regs on Coal and Mercury

The EPA announced new regulations intended to force coal-fired power plants to modernize or else. Regulating and limiting the mercury fallout from these plants is good news for people and fish - especially those who live in the New England. Warnings about eating fish abound in places like Maine. But these warnings are the result of pollution (mercury and acid deposition) from industry not in Maine, but in places like Ohio. I took the photo on West Virginia on a stream that is being "limed" to help reduce the impacts of acid deposition from coal-fired power plants.

EPA and Mercury

Native Trout in Texas?

Forget about stocked non-native trout below dams, there is an effort underway to return native Rio Grande cutthroat trout to west Texas. Today, this subspecies is found only in New Mexico and southern Colorado, but were extirpated from Texas long ago. Texas Trout

Yellowstone cutthroats and grizzly bears

The decline of Yellowstone cutthroat trout is apparently having a significant impact on Yellowstone NP grizzly bears who once feasted on these tasty trout as they moved into small creeks to spawn. Without the trout, the bears go looking for other food sources such as cows, trash, and the occasional camper. The native trout are disappearing because of the illegal introduction of lake trout, which are big, voracious predatory, non-native fish (in Yellowstone). Bears are moving out of the Park in search of food, meaning more conflicts with people. Bears inevitably lose these conflicts. At the same time, there is growing political pressure to de-list the grizzly bear because their numbers have grown in recent decades. But, given the decline of this important food source, this is no time to reduce the protection for the West's greatest predator. See the related story here:

Fish and Bears