Tag: river

Eating Asian Carp

  • Dr. John Holden from Rockford, Illinois is the CEO of Heartland Processing, which aims to convert millions of tons of Asian carp into pet food, fishmeal and fish oil. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There are rivers in the Midwest that are just flush with fish. Normally, that would be great, but these are two species of invasive Asian Carp – and they shouldn’t be there in the first place. These foreign fish breed so quickly and grow so large, they push out native fish species. There are entrepreneurs who dream of getting rid of Asian carp. Shawn Allee looks at what they’ve cooked up and whether it could do any good:

Transcript

There are rivers in the Midwest that are just flush with fish. Normally, that would be great, but these are two species of invasive Asian Carp – and they shouldn’t be there in the first place.
These foreign fish breed so quickly and grow so large, they push out native fish species. There are entrepreneurs who dream of getting rid of Asian carp.
Shawn Allee looks at what they’ve cooked up and whether it could do any good:

One businessman wants to take on Asian carp.

He’s John Holden and he started up the brand-new Heartland Processing company.
When I visit his factory in central Illinois, Holden walks me around his machines.

They transform fresh carp into fish oil and dry fishmeal. Holden says the fishmeal might make good pet food.

He’s tested it his own dog.

“He just inhaled it. You got more of that for me?”

Unfortunately, there are no carp today – and I have to settle for a dry-run demo.

John Holden is a doctor by trade, but he started his business after he watched Internet video of carp in the Illinois River.

“I went onto YouTube, and I said, this is nuts.”

“What did you see when you went onto YouTube?”

“Fish jumping like it was boiling water. The most poignant one was the department of natural resources one. All of a sudden they’re jumping out of the river, and smacking the DNR people.”

Actually, a guy from the state Department of Natural Resources is on-hand to vouch for this. He’s Chris McCloud.

“We’ve had conservation police have their teeth knocked out.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Oh no.”

McCloud says the state wants to cut back the carp population – not out of some vendetta, but because silver and big-head Asian carp pretty much took over the Illinois river from native fish.

McCloud says the agency’s got a plan.
Commercial fishing fits into it.

“It basically says, let’s see what this can do and then determine how much processing would be needed to make a dent in a population that’s so voracious.”

Now, my question is: Will massive, commercial harvesting of carp really work? I mean, the Illinois river’s 275 miles long, and I’ve seen videos that it’s thick with Asian carp.

To get an informed opinion, I head to the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Kevin Irons works there – he tracks carp populations along the Illinois River.

“As biologists we’re very encouraged by the Heartland Processing plant and commercial fishermen that are taking the fish out. From some of the research we’ve looked at, the only way we can reduce the numbers is by commercially harvesting them”

Irons walks me through his argument.

To start, he opens a freezer.

“These are the ones that will jump out and hit ya.”

“This one’s like 2.5 feet long.”

“That’s a relatively small one. There are many that are 3-4 feet long.”

Irons says the two troublesome varieties of Asian carp are native to Russia, the Mideast and China.

They’re small in China – they’re super-sized here.

“Nowhere else in the world do we have populations like this because they’re over-fished everywhere else. People in the YangTze River rarely see them over 4-5 pounds because they’re taken soon in their life cycles.”

How big can they get here?

“The world record was taken in St. Louis – nearly a hundred pounds.”

Irons says Chinese and other ethnic food markets in the US sell Asian carp but most Americans won’t touch them.

“We might go to a restaurant and get a walleye or perch fillet – they’re boneless and they’re beautifully done. These can be just as tasty, but they have bones. My wife, if she gets a bone in her fish, she’s just about done; she doesn’t want to mess with the bones. We’re pretty spoiled.”

Irons says if most Americans won’t eat Asian carp, maybe processors like Heartland can pick up the slack by making them into pet and animal feed.

It might not eliminate carp, but Irons says it might get darn close.

If it works too well – and Heartland runs out of fish on the Illinois River – Irons says there are plenty of carp waiting for processing in the Mississippi and other rivers.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Water Pollution Feminizing Fish

  • Chemicals in the water are mixing up fish's gender (Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:

This study’s found a group of chemicals that block the male hormone testosterone is getting into rivers.

Charles Tyler is the lead author of the paper in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

He says they don’t know exactly where these chemicals are coming from, but some medicines and pesticides can block testosterone. So, add that to the estrogen…

“And so it’s very likely they’re going to have interactive and additive effects, if you like, to induce a double whammy on the poor fish.”

Tyler says they don’t know if what’s happening in fish is also happening in people.

Human male fertility has been declining. But there might be other chemicals contributing to the problem.

And besides, there’s a difference. Fish can’t get away from these testosterone blocking chemicals or the estrogen in the water – they live and swim in them. So Tyler says they’re getting a much higher dose.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Interview: Keeping Alien Invaders Out

  • Asian Carp is one species that is very dangerous to the Great Lakes ecosystem (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation.
But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough.
Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Transcript

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation. But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough. Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Joel Brammeier: Well, ecological separation means no species moving between
the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. When you consider the problem of
invasive species, unlike chemical pollution, which you can reduce to a certain
safe level, there is no safe level of invasive species. Once two get in, they can
reproduce, and the damage is done, and there’s no going back. So, an
ecological separation means stopping fish, and eggs, and other critters from
moving back and forth between the two systems.

Lester Graham: How do you do that when there’s so much commercial traffic
and recreational boating, and just the water flowing through?

Brammeier: Well, in our research, we found that tech fixes – electrical barriers,
sound barriers, blowing bubbles through the water to try and deter fish from
moving – those things can reduce the risk. But for invasive species, risk
reduction really isn’t enough – you need 100% protection. And to do that, we’re
probably looking at some physical barrier that prevents water and live organisms
from moving between those two great watersheds.

Graham: I can imagine the commercial shippers are not thrilled about that.

Brammeier: Well, I think it remains to be seen. Nobody’s quite sure where the
best place is to put a barrier. We discussed about half a dozen different
scenarios under which you could implement that kind of separation. The
Chicago waterway system does support about 25 million tons, give or take, a
year of commercial commodity traffic – and that’s a significant amount. The
reality is that most of that cargo is internal to the Chicago waterways. So, there
isn’t a huge exchange of cargo between the Chicago waterway and the Great
Lakes. And that’s a good thing. That means we have opportunities to actually
split the system back to the way it historically was, and at the same time, solve
our invasive species problem.

Graham: Now, we can see how that would benefit the environment, but how
would it affect the economy?

Brammeier: Well, again, going back to this issue of commercial navigation. If we
create a separation in this system that has a minimal impact on most of the cargo
in the Chicago waterway, we’re really talking about potentially a very small
impact. And, frankly, there’s an opportunity here to create a benefit for
commodity movements as well. A lot of the cargo transfer facilities on the south
side of Chicago are outmoded, outdated, and not competitive. And, any
investment in this kind of project that changed that and also allowed cargo to
move more efficiently and created new port facilities, could have that kind of
benefit, besides protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species.

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Mountaintop Mining (Part Two)

  • Gary Anderson in Front of Coal River Mountain (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)

Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:

Transcript

Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:

Coal River Mountain is one of the last in Raleigh County West Virginia, and it’s next in line for mountaintop removal mining. A local group, the Coal River Wind Project, wants to build a wind farm along the mountain’s ridges.

Lorelei Scarbro has lived most of her life in the West Virginia coal fields. She’s the daughter, granddaughter and widow of coal miners. She knows her opposition to coal mining is seen by her neighbors as a direct threat to their jobs.

“It has been difficult. But people begin to understand that we’re not trying to take something away from them. You’re trying to add something to the area.”

She says mountaintop removal coal mining is short-term gain with long-term damage.

“The pace we’re going; it will be nothing left. I have a five-year-old granddaughter, and I can’t imagine what the air and water will be like when she is at childbearing age if we continue at this pace, because they’re covering headwaters streams, they’re starving off the water supply, they are destroying the air.”

And the next mountain in Scarbro’s home area to be mined is likely Coal River Mountain.

That’s why Coal River Wind Project commissioned a study to see if wind turbines would work. It turns out, the mountain has industrial strength wind. Enough to power 164 turbines. The project would create 200 local jobs during construction, and 40 permanent jobs. Rory McIlmoir is the project coordinator.

“The wind farm would generate an average of $1.74 million a year for the first 20 years. In year one it would generate over three million dollars. That’s the property tax. Blowing up the mountain for coal, on the other hand, would only bring $36,000 back to the county.”

That’s just the property taxes. The wind farm would make about $1.75 million dollars a year in revenue according to the study.

But the wind project has hit a stumbling block. A recent Bush administration rule change allows mining waste to be dumped into streams. That’s cleared the way for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to approve a permit for Massey Energy to do mountaintop removal mining here. If the mining occurs, the mountains would be lowered by several hundred feet. That would scrap the wind turbine project.

Activist Lorelei Scarbro thinks the wind project is the one thing that can stop the destruction of Coal River Mountain and others targeted for mountain top removal coal mining.

“It will save the mountains, it will save the wildlife and the hardwood forests and the vegetation and the water. It’s something that is desperately needed. Of course, our biggest obstacle is the fact that that the land is leased to the coal company.”

But the people who own the land say, if coal mining were stopped by the government, they’d consider the wind farm. The wind farm project coordinator, Rory McIlmoir, says they’d benefit for a lot longer if they did.

“Because, if they can make a few million each year from royalties then they’re interested in that. But, the choice right now is easily coal.”

The Coal River Wind Project has presented the study to West Virginia’s Governor. And 10,000 people signed a petition asking the state to think beyond coal and think about the future of energy, the economy, the mountains and the people.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.

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From River Towns to Eagle Towns

  • This year, the Dubuque, Iowa Eagle Watch organizers invited the World Bird Sanctuary of St. Louis to bring a captive bald eagle so families could get as close a look as possible without feeling the winter chill. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The American bald eagle is the Endangered Species Act’s poster child, it’s Come-back
kid. This time of year, a lot of towns organize eagle watches to celebrate the success
story and to attract tourists. Reporter Shawn Allee couldn’t resist visiting one:

Transcript

The American bald eagle is the Endangered Species Act’s poster child, it’s Come-back
kid. This time of year, a lot of towns organize eagle watches to celebrate the success
story and to attract tourists. Reporter Shawn Allee couldn’t resist visiting one:

I wasn’t exactly sure where to spot eagles in Dubuque, Iowa, so for the annual Eagle Watch, I
started indoors – at the city’s convention center.

There were plenty of eagle-related knick-knacks for sale – like eagle bobble-heads, plush toys,
and photos.

But locals there told me where to find eagles, and why the Eagle Watch means so much.

“Twenty years ago, we read about eagles, we heard about eagles but we never ever saw
one.”

That’s Dubuque photographer, Robert Eichman.

Eichman: “I’ve been taking pictures for 65 years. I probably never got a picture of an eagle
until about 7 or 8 years ago, so I have witnessed their comeback.”

Allee: “So, now this is one of their hotspots.”

Eichman: “Right. This time of year, there may be four- to five-hundred eagles roosting on
the bluffs on either side of the river.”

Eichman said the best place to see them is on the Mississippi River. There’s a dam that stops the
river – and a lock that let’s boats through. He suggested I try the Eagle Watch trolley.

Allee: “Hi there. Are you going to the lock?”

Driver: “Yeah.”

Allee: “Great.”

Dubuque’s had an Eagle Watch event for twenty one years, but dozens of towns in the
upper Midwest sponsor them in January and February.

Eagles were declared endangered in the early seventies because a pesticide was killing their
young. They’re now off the federal endangered and threatened list.

Seeing an eagle is still novel enough that there’s a small tourist industry built around their winter
hunting grounds.

Driver: “Right up here to the left folks, there are four, five, six right in a row.”

Allee: “There they are. It’s amazing. I’ll get out here.”

I’d seen a few eagles before but never this many at once; they were in trees and swooping over
the river. I headed to a lookout run by the army corps of engineers.

Park ranger Bret Streckwald was there to answer questions.

Allee: “Why is it this is such a good location to see bald eagles in the winter time?”

Streckwald: “Well, it’s the lock and dam, and they’re primary food is fish.”

Allee: “So, on our left, it’s solid ice on the Mississippi River, then what do we see on the
right?”

Streckwald: “Open water. The dam keeps the water open and the fish go through the dam
and they’re stunned a little bit, and it makes it pretty easy for the eagles to feed on them.”

Allee: “Hardly seems fair, but it keeps the eagles pretty healthy.”

Streckwald: “Yeah, they’re all pretty well-fed.”

Allee: “So what do you have set up here?”

Streckwald: “We have some spotting scopes set up on the various eagles that are stationary
and obviously we have the birds that are flying. We have a lot of people that like to take
pictures.”

Allee: “I don’t know how good this shot is going to be with my very amateurish camera,
but…”

Boy: “Dad – I saw one in the telescope. I saw one in the telescope flying! Whoa … ahuh.”

Allee: “I think this boy had the right idea, I’m now looking through one of these telescopes
the army corps of engineers set up for us. And I can see this eagle perfectly. The ice is
bobbing up and down, and he’s going with it. He’s staring out on the water, steely-eyed. It’s
a nice image.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Throwing the Big Fish Back

  • Fishing laws in Canada and US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:

Transcript

People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:

This is the guy who wants to change how a lot of people fish.

“My name is Paul Venturelli and I study fisheries biology at the University of Toronto.”

Venturelli’s disturbed by how many fish species are on the brink of collapse – either in oceans or in fresh water.

He hopes to grow fish stocks – with this fishing advice.

Toss the big ones back.

And what’s he got to back that up?

“I’ve got about ten pages of notes here. Nah, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.”

Actually, he says the idea is pretty simple.

“A ton of big, old fish will produce more new fish than a ton of smaller, younger fish. And this is because the bigger, older fish tend to produce offspring that have a higher chance of survival.”

Venturelli studies mostly ocean-species, but he says the principal should apply to North American freshwater fish like pike and walleye, too.

But Venturelli’s got a problem spreading this idea around.

Fishing laws in Canada and a lot of US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones.

I asked one of the head guys in Illinois fisheries, Joe Ferencak, why that is.

“Essentially what you’re doing with that minimum size limit is protecting one or two year classes of reproductive age fish so they can successfully spawn or reproduce.”

Ferencak says, fisheries science has stood behind the ‘protect the small fish’ theory for decades – with some exceptions.

He says to change laws, Venturelli would need to do more studies.

Plus, Ferencak says no state would want to completely keep people from big fish – that’s just not much fun.

“We want to maintain and enhance these fisheries for the benefit of the fishing public, the angler. And it’s kind of counter-intuitive to not allow them to take these larger fish.”

Well, I figure it wouldn’t be fair to talk about big fish without talking to outdoorsmen, so I spent some time in Griffith, Indiana.

It’s about ten miles from Lake Michigan.

Fishing and hunting outlets are all around – and there’s this place.

Allee: “So what’s the establishment.”

Leap: “American Natural Resources.”

Edward Leap Senior runs American Natural Resources – it’s a taxidermy shop – with stuffed deer, fox, and fish filling every nook and cranny.

I figure Leap would rush to the defense of catching big fish, but, you know what? He doesn’t bite.

Allee: “If you get a whole bunch of fish in your boat, I mean, you want to show off the big one. Most people do, right?”

Leap: “Yes and no, though. When you get talking about the conscientious outdoorsman, no, he’s not going to be thinking this way. He’s going to say, ‘I got this fifteen pound walleye, a super-trophy fish. It took a lot of years to grow this fish, I’m going to take a picture of it and I’m going to release it.'”

And, to prove the point, he reaches back and pulls a fish trophy off the shelf.

“For the trophy part of it, we’ll do a reproduction of it that you can’t tell from the real thing. And the fish now is out there spawning, and making eggs, and continuing its species.”

Leap says more and more fishermen are having him make fake fish – or, reproductions, as he calls them.

So, from his vantage, scientists like Paul Venturelli won’t have too much trouble with the advice to ‘throw back the big ones.’

Leap says you don’t have to keep fish you catch, and in his experience, smaller fish make better eating anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Asian Carp Barrier on Low

  • Asian Carp can grow up to 110 pounds (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A stronger electric barrier
to keep an invasive fish out of the
Great Lakes is set to be turned on.
But people who travel past the
underwater barrier are worried about
electric shocks. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

A stronger electric barrier
to keep an invasive fish out of the
Great Lakes is set to be turned on.
But people who travel past the
underwater barrier are worried about
electric shocks. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

This barrier is supposed to keep Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes.

Those fish escaped from Southern fish farms years ago. They’ve spread up the Mississippi river.
Now they’re near a canal that connects the Mississippi system with the Great Lakes.

Biologists worry the big fish would ruin Great Lakes fishing and the Lakes’ ecosystems. Start up
of ‘The Stronger Barrier’ was delayed because of concerns the electric current could hurt crews
on barges and people on recreational boats as the vessels passed by.

U.S. Coast Guard Captain Bruce Jones recently gave thumbs-up to running the new barrier at
low power.

“ We believe it will continue to keep the Great Lakes protected from carp through the winter, until
spawning season starts.”

But biologists don’t think the barrier will work well enough at low power. And barge operators
don’t want it on at all. They’ll be discussing the concerns at a meeting in Chicago in January.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Stripping Energy From Slow Water

  • Michael Bernitsas, professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, stands before a prototype of his VIVACE hydrokinetic energy device. (Photo by Scott Galvin, courtesy of the University of Michigan)

Some scientists think that
the future of energy is in water.
More specifically, it’s in slow-
moving water. Kyle Norris has more:

Transcript

Some scientists think that
the future of energy is in water.
More specifically, it’s in slow-
moving water. Kyle Norris has more:

Michael Bernitsas is really excited about using water to generate electricity.

“Marine renewable energy is huge. Water is the best natural medium for
storing energy.”

Bernitsas is a Professor of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the
University of Michigan. And he’s made this machine. Basically it’s a
cylinder that bobs up-and-down in a tank of slow flowing water. The
cylinder creates these swirls of water that hit a generator. And it turns the
kinetic energy into electricity.

Bernitsas thinks there’s a lot of potential to create clean, renewable energy
from flowing water. He says people could eventually put machines, like this
one, in rivers and power houses.

And he says bigger versions of the machine could go into oceans and rivers.
And generate as much electricity as a small coal-burning power plant.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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Tag-Teaming the Dead Zone

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Nitrogen and phosphorus come from fertilizers used on lawns and farm fields. The chemicals
pollute water throughout the Mississippi River Basin and down to the Gulf of Mexico. The
National Research Council has been studying the problem.

David Dzombak is an Engineering Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and helped the
council write a new report. He says the biggest recommendation is for the US Environmental
Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture to team up.

“This is a very large scale problem. It’s taken many years to develop and will take many years to
turn around.”

And Dzombak says the two agencies need to get started. The report recommends the federal
agencies work with states to restrict the amount of fertilizer that can go into streams and rivers. It
also calls for a network of experiments to filter or buffer the fertilizer runoff in badly-polluted
watersheds.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Trout Used as the ‘Canary’ in a Stream

  • Natural resources workers wade in the Vermillion River, 30 minutes south of Minneapolis. They're sending mild shocks through the water to capture trout and measure them. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Suburban growth typically degrades
the quality of rivers and lakes. But
developers are finding ways to protect
water quality even as they build housing
developments and malls. Stephanie Hemphill
reports on a stream in a major metropolitan
area that still has trophy-sized native
trout in it – and how people are working
together to protect the trout:

Transcript

Suburban growth typically degrades
the quality of rivers and lakes. But
developers are finding ways to protect
water quality even as they build housing
developments and malls. Stephanie Hemphill
reports on a stream in a major metropolitan
area that still has trophy-sized native
trout in it – and how people are working
together to protect the trout:

A half dozen people in waders stand nearly waist-deep in a bend of
the Vermillion River. They’re getting ready to send electric shocks
through the water.

(sound of gas motor starting)

They’re looking for trout.

They’re stunning the fish so they can catch them in nets. When they
have about ten fish of all sizes in their bucket, they pull their boat to
the side to count and measure them.

“You can see on the one he’s pulling out right now, it’s a male, it’s got
that big hook jaw on the front. 532. These are millimeters; that’s
about 21 inches. ”

Brian Nerbonne is a trout habitat specialist with the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources, and today he’s a happy man. He’s
collecting a healthy batch of trout on this river just thirty minutes from
downtown Minneapolis. He figures the big ones they’re finding are
about six years old.

“Fish grow really fast in the Vermillion: you saw when we were
shocking there’s a lot of a other fish, suckers, creek chubs, and things
like that they can eat, they grow a lot faster eating those other fish
than if they were just eating bugs.”

Biologists regard trout as a kind of canary in the coal mine. These
trout are healthy, and that’s a sign that this river is healthy for all
kinds of animals, including people.

As you walk along the stream, you can see schools and houses and
roads literally a stone’s throw from the river. Typically, development
like this threatens the trout, because it produces warm, dirty storm
water runoff.

Twenty years ago, a local sportsmen’s group asked the state to
designate parts of the Vermillion River as a trout stream. That would
mean local governments would have to do more to protect the water
quality, and not all of them were happy with the idea.

State planner Michele Hanson had the task of coaxing local officials
to get on board.

She did that by doing what the DNR is doing today – shocking the
river to show local officials there was something there worth
protecting.

“Once everyone believed us that it’s trout stream, then we went out
and met with every community along the river, of the section that we
were going to designate as trout stream, to tell them what it would
mean to them, what changes might happen.”

It would mean every town, every township and county that the river
flowed through would have to make some changes in the way they
developed.

Now, in some sections of the river, builders must leave a buffer to
protect the stream, as much as 150-feet wide.

Also, they need to avoid increasing the amount of runoff. Rainwater
that sheets off roads and driveways and rushes directly into the river
is too warm for the trout.

Builders are learning how to get the water to soak into the ground
instead. They can build narrower streets and shorter driveways.
They can build rain gardens and other landscaping that holds the
runoff long enough that it can soak in.

The state is also building structures in the river to provide better
hiding places and spawning grounds for the trout.

(sound of counting fish)

It’s all aimed at holding onto a rare treasure – a healthy trout stream in
a major metropolitan area.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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