AUGUSTA LEADS LOCAL CHARGE AGAINST NATIONAL FOREST FRACKING

In late February, the Augusta County Board of Supervisors voted to ban hydraulic fracturing by way of a zoning ordinance, making it the first county in the Old Dominion to totally prohibit the invasive natural gas drilling practice. The move has been praised by sportsmen and conservation groups, as it effectively protects clean water and wildlife in the county, which includes 193,000 acres of the George Washington National Forest and countless headwater streams.

A fracking drill pad in the Pine Creek Valley of Pennsylvania. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is the process of pumping pressurized chemicals, water, and sand down drill holes in the ground to crack open fissures in shale which contain small amounts of natural gas.

    The practice poses potential public and environmental health issues, since spills threaten to contaminate ground or surface water with hydrocarbons and other fracking fluids. The chemicals included in the pressurized fracking fluids are often undisclosed, and different companies use different mixtures. Such lack of transparency has been cause for suspicion.

    Furthermore, constructing a drill pad requires the clear-cutting of several acres of forest. Lights on the drills are often left on at night, illuminating surrounding forest and disrupting normal wildlife habits.

    But the impacts of fracking are hardly felt just at the drill site. Infrastructure is necessary to construct the pads and to shuttle materials and product. Roads must be constructed for the large trucks that are used to haul equipment and the actual drill to the site. Pipelines—akin to the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline—are necessary for funneling captured gas to market. Both of these structures inevitably cross many headwater streams.

    Considering the current need to harness new energy sources in the United States, and considering the alternative strategies, fracking natural gas doesn’t stand to be an environmental no-go, as continued coal mining could be labeled. However, it must be done responsibly and transparently. That means knowing where fracking is a responsible choice and where it is not.

    In the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia, the construction of roads and natural gas pipelines crossing headwater mountain streams would be a risky gamble of our prized native brook trout—the official state fish—, the ecological health downstream, and the state’s water supply. Nearly four million people—whether they know it or not—source their drinking water from National Forest land in Virginia, including those living in Richmond and D.C.

    What’s more, much of Augusta’s geology is “karst,” meaning it is comprised of soluble rock, commonly limestone and dolomite. Thus, any pipeline leak would be very likely to contaminate groundwater in a large area and eventually reach surface water.

    Despite the potential dangers, the National Forest Service allows hydraulic fracturing on forest lands across the country. However, following a November 2014 announcement, the current plan for the George Washington National Forest allows hydraulic fracturing on 177,000 acres, where private mineral rights and leases to oil and gas companies are pre-existing.

    Augusta County’s decision to ban such activities is, in fact, legal. The Virginia Code grants local governments the authority to “regulate, restrict, permit, prohibit, and determine” land uses, such as “the excavation or mining of soil or other natural resources.”

    Still, the decision to install an outright ban on fracking may ruffle some industry feathers, though some experts speculate that a ban will be more effective in deflecting potential lawsuits than a seemingly always-porous regulatory process. Regardless, considering what we have to lose in the mountains of Augusta County, the ban is essential.

    Augusta County’s assertion of a ban on fracking is a clear and confident placement of the value of natural resource health and clean drinking water over the potential gain offered by natural gas fracking.□

*Originally published in The Rural Virginian

POOPING ON MOTHER NATURE'S FLOOR

I’ve worked at two different kinds of jobs in my brief 20 years—one that stimulates my mind and soul and satisfies the curious outdoorsman in me, and retail. And I haven’t worked retail much—just long enough to learn to despise it and that the biosphere is headed for the gutter. Let me explain.

    One particular day, during the few months I was employed by The Orvis Company in Charlottesville prior to college, a woman entered the store with her black lab. As she perused a shelf of gloves, I approached her and asked if I could do anything for her. She asked a series of piercing questions, to which I confidently provided answers I’d previously prepared by reading the garment’s packaging. She became incredulous and irate at my ineptitude after asking whether or not the gloves would conform to her hand over time and, having never worn that particular pair of women’s gloves for multiple seasons, I had to admit I didn’t know. She left the store silently, leaving behind a fresh pile of scat on the pebbly floor that I confidently identified as a black lab’s.

    After sifting through some strong adjectives, I got to thinking about the implications of her actions. Had she returned during my employment, I likely wouldn’t have greeted her so cheerfully. But what if she treated others the same way? I for one would think twice before allowing my dog to defecate on my barber’s floor, before insulting a potentially vengeful chef. But in an era when goods and services are acquired easily and impersonally, the motivation to respect the origins of such things is voluntary at best. The social ethic is weak.

    In a simpler time, when small businesses ruled and globalization hadn’t yet broken communal webs to bits, a respectful relationship with a farmer would ensure that you and your family had quality food when he had his. Loyalty to a mechanic or horseshoer would mean continued transportation and help in a fix.

    Small towns and the writing trade mimic this. Respect intel entrusted to you by a fly shop owner in humble Roscoe, New York, and you’ll get more. Betray that trust, and you’ll be the most hated individual in the Catskills. Consistently meet deadlines and turn in quality, well-researched writing, and editors will come to rely on your name. Fail to meet deadlines or make a habit of using copyrighted materials or faulty facts, and you’ll be blacklisted and your career will end before it began. These people talk.

    Rewind to a time even longer ago, when asphalt paved no inch of this continent, when people wore skins after eating what was inside. Hunting enabled eating, and was directly tied to forest health. The Shawnees of the Shenandoah Valley knew their fishing success depended on their relationship with the river, and that the vitality of their agricultural crop was a factor of soil health, which could be bolstered by applying fish for fertilizer.

    I hadn’t quite been born to experience those times, but I have a sneaking suspicion that any individual so blind to even think about clear-cutting a mountain, or dumping human waste into the Shenandoah River—or, God forbid, Naked Creek—would have been dutifully shunned. It’s most likely, however, that such transgressions were committed only by angry, rogue individuals. It’s downright dumb to think it inconsequential to torch your food supply.

    Despite it being lawfully looked down upon, a modern person of even base intelligence would comprehend the negative social impacts of burning down the local grocery store or poisoning the water supply. But the reality is that, though we’ve grown perceptually further apart from nature over the course of industrial human history, our dependence on the greater world ecosystem has remained static.

    Maybe it’s not everyday news for someone to burn the grocery store or poison the well, but acts like littering, spraying volumes of pesticides and fertilizers, and even the occasional (and totally preventable) oil spill achieve the same ends. Declining water quality due to contamination breeds declining soil quality, which requires farmers to pump more chemicals into their fields, lowering the nutritional value of our food, and killing the soil, requiring increasingly larger volumes of chemical correction. These acts often go unpunished, fly completely under the radar of the general public, or are hardly thought of as harmful. Or, the effects raise a temporary eyebrow, soon lowered with the idea that humans, in their fallacious, God-like reign over planet Earth, can engineer their way to a happy ending.

    Such thinking is irresponsible and short-sighted. Our social contract with Mother Nature is weak, and until we recognize this, and learn that we can’t poop on her floor without consequence, we will destroy ourselves as a species, and the earth on which we live.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

"STILL"

Time machines have as of yet not been invented, but cars have a century been in popular utilization, and I have found them to aptly serve a similar purpose, without sacrificing the experiential value in “getting there.” Given the right route, one can hop in a car, drive a few hours, and find themselves in the midst of a culture minutely varied, but so as to suggest the loss of a few decades of what they call forward progress. I have found this to be true of most routes leading out of Megalopolis and adjacent developments and into the North Woods.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    It’s commonly said that life is slower in the south, but I’d offer New England as more qualified for the classification. A northerly latitude lengthens days in the summer, and fewer people and less development breeds fewer distractions from some of the last remaining expanses of true wilderness left on the East Coast. A sporting culture permeates deeper in the day-to-day, compared to its relative absence in more urbanized localities.

    One such route recently transported my time machine and I to a township called Second College Grant, or “The Grant,” as it is referred to by citizens of nearby Errol, New Hampshire and others geographically related.

    With a population of zero, The Grant is more of a resource investment than a town. In 1807, its 27,000 acres were donated to Dartmouth College. Thereafter, the property has been actively logged to provide scholarship funds for students, and well-managed for public outdoor recreation. As such, it carries all the time-ago drama of a working northern forest.

    Unless you happen to be one of the oft-manipulated, Dartmouth-associated gate key-bearers, the gravel road that traverses the property is restricted to foot-travel. Therefore, much of the interior remains rugged wilderness.

    The Grant’s main road parallels the Dead Diamond River, which is the largest unstocked native brook trout stream in the state, and plays host to some of New Hampshire’s last remaining mythically proportioned brook trout.

    The river still has brook trout, but not like they’ve been written about finning the dark pools of the river in centuries past. Recent years have seen the illegal introduction of smallmouth bass in the Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge downstream, and the resultant invasion of the bass upstream into brookie territory.

    Black bear, moose, deer, squirrels, and various other creatures thrive on the property. One could argue that active logging keeps up a healthy population of grouse, individual members of which seem to be so isolated as to be relatively unafraid of approaching humans, and which mystify my upland bird-deprived Virginia sensibilities upon every encounter.

    “Our grouse situation is still pretty good,” are the words that ground me.

    Another route took my time machine even further into the past.

    Kokadjo, Maine is a town of a trading post with one worker, no gas station, and a famous brook trout and salmon stream. KOKADJO. POP: NOT MANY are the words that greet the traveler, and I fear the plurality of the word “many” might be a subtle overstatement.

    13 miles by logging road north of Kokadjo sits a small homestead of old sporting camps on SpencerPond, owned by husband and wife—Dana Black, a registered Maine guide and lobsterman, and Christine Howe, also a registered Maine guide with an environmental education and a history with the EPA.

    That I ended up on their doorstep was by chance and grace, but I quickly found that my time machine had done its job satisfactorily. Among the Spencer Pond Camps, there is no electricity or running water. Just kerosene lanterns, a wood stove, a well pump, and a solar bag for washing behind the ears as is often necessary when bushwhacking through northern forest as I do every day, these days. And so there is room to wonder about the way life used to be and other things of rival romance.

    Between the camps and the closest incorporated establishment sit thousands of acres of “big woods,” complete with unnamed, walk-in brook trout ponds, and a population of bear and moose that easily outnumbers people.

    In talking about fishing, Dana, who is learning the art of fly fishing, told me of the brook trout pond fishing in the area.

    “Maine still has pretty good pond fishing for brook trout,” he said.

    Maine is widely held as our nation’s last foothold for vital populations of native brook trout, and so it struck me that I had been encountering the word “still” a little too often, and it made me nervous. To paraphrase the great conservationist, Aldo Leopold, given the chance to go forward or go fishing, I’d quickly choose fishing, but I fear the world is developing in the opposite direction.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

FAMILIAR FACES IN STRANGE PLACES

I left home on a Tuesday. Little Blue didn’t seem as full as perhaps she should be with the intent of spending a month on the road in New England on a tight budget. But I wasn’t lacking in flies, food, or camera gear. So what more do I need? The jury is still out on that ever-standing question, though it’s only Day 1.

    When I found Cape Cod for the first time in two years, she was covered in darkness. Traffic held me up in the bold points of Megalopolis, and I didn’t make camp before sunset, as was the intention. Oh well. It’s all part of it.

    I regrouped in the morning. Day 1, officially, and pointed Little Blue towards Buttermilk Bay of Buzzards Bay, on the eastern edge of the Cape.

    Buttermilk is an uncelebrated fishery, itself, but it drains the 4.5-mile spring creek, Red Brook, which flows south from White Island Pond through classic Massachusetts pine barrens. Every year, around the middle of May and early June, Red Brook is the seasonal host of alewives and blueback herring, both herring species that run up the river to spawn, and the water is thick with them.

    But herring is not why people come to Red Brook. Hidden beneath undercut banks, and nestled up tight to woody cover and watercress edges, fin the speckled beneficiaries of a great conservation success story.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    I connected with one on the end of a delicate, tricky cast that floated through a tangle of trees and landed on the upstream edge of a watercress patch. In a flash of gold he darted out from cover and ate my Edison Tiger, fashioned in a vise weeks prior.

    A familiar face in a strange place, the small brook trout that came to quiver in my hand looked no different than any I had tricked from their mountain lairs back home. However, this fish’s life story is a bit different.

    He started his life as an egg in the slow, meandering Red Brook, but his childhood years were spent along the weedy banks of buttermilk bay, filtering saltwater, and feeding on small fish and crustaceans. In the creek, as a grown individual, he sits in wait for the chance to snack on a herring fry, as they, like their spawning parents, are thick in the river.

    Indeed, until recently, the “salters,” as they are called, of Red Brook were one of the last known populations of sea-run brook trout remaining, and like their Appalachian cousins, they too face adversity.

    Near the headwaters of Red Brook and White Island Pond is the town of Cranberry, aptly named, as the hub of a great deal of historical (and ongoing) cranberry farming. As a tool perceived to be ecologically harmless, Red Brook was dammed to flood acres of cranberry bogs.

    The dam spelled low and warming water on the downstream side, which made it impossible for coldwater species to thrive where they once had unhindered. Once the plight of the salters was discovered, a collaborative effort between Trout Unlimited, the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife, and the Trustees of Reservations got the dam removed, woody cover added to the streambed, and a regular stream monitoring protocol instated.

    Today, that stretch of river is managed under special regulations, and enjoyed by fishermen, birdwatchers, hikers, and photographers.

    There are other rivers like Red Brook, and all have fishable populations of salters that love to chew on streamers. If for some reason you needed to find me sometime in the next few days, you can be sure it’s somewhere under the branches, and within 40 feet of a watercress patch sliding flies to familiar faces.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

PROPOSED WASTEWATER DISCHARGE AT BREMO THREATENS JAMES

On Tuesday, December 1, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VDEQ) hosted a public hearing at Central Elementary School in Fluvanna County to permit the “dewatering” of coal ash ponds at the Bremo Bluff Power Plant on the banks of the James River, not far from Fork Union. The proposed permit would allow Dominion to discharge arsenic, hexavalent chromium, selenium, and several other metals into the river with little or no prior treatment.

    Previously Virginia’s oldest coal-fueled power plant, the Bremo Bluff operation was converted to a natural gas-powered facility in June of 2014, which brought an improvement to the Commonwealth’s overall air quality.

    Now, just over a year later, the proposed wastewater treatment practice promises to harm the water quality of our nation’s river.

    The process of “dewatering,” simply, is the process of removing liquid from solid substances in wastewater mixtures. As it stands, Dominion’s draft permit is a reissuance of a previously-existing permit that now proposes to release cooling water and treated industrial wastewater associated with the fallow coal ash ponds from the plant’s coal-burning years into the James River at Bremo Bluff.

    In a press release by the James River Association (JRA) advertising the results of the hearing, a few concerns were voiced.

    First, the draft permit is in violation of the Clean Water Act. JRA brings further attention to the fact that the permitting limits established by the VDEQ are significantly higher than those set in other states, and are inefficient in preserving the aquatic ecosystem and public health. The James River supports nearly a third of Virginia residents living in 39 counties and 19 towns and cities, who depend upon its water for drinking.

    Second, there is no mention of endangered species considerations in the draft plan. The Endangered Species Act, as it has the power to influence regulations for land- and water-use practices that even slightly impact the vitality of a struggling species, is a major player in many environmental protections cases, and will likely be a popular arguing point for commenters on this issue.

    It is worthy of note that the James River, in the most recent State of theJames report, was given a B- rating for overall ecosystem health, pooling several contributing factors. Furthermore, wastewater pollution control, specifically, was given a rating of over 100 percent, citing facility upgrades and the resulting improvements in nitrogen and phosphorus pollution reductions, which places the James well ahead of schedule for goals set as part of the Chesapeake Bay Cleanup.

    Still, in its most recent State of theBay assessment, the Chesapeake was rated a D+ for overall health, with a slow pattern of improvement.

    Though, according to these popularized reports, the James is a relatively healthy environment from a water quality perspective, as always, it is important that we think progressively. The James River scores higher than the Bay, but far from perfect. There is still work to be done, and setting beneficial, responsible precedents in environmental policy is an important first step.

    The public comment period on this draft permit will remain open until December 14, 2015. Written comments may be submitted to Beverley Carver at Beverley.carver@deq.virginia.gov. Letters may be mailed to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, company of Beverley Caver.

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

CONGRESS: REAUTHORIZE THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND

The George Washington-Jefferson National Forest—covering over 1.8 million acres in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, it is one of the largest blocks of public land in the eastern United States, however non-contiguous and geographically tattered.

    In May of 2014, a portion of that map—the Old Dominion’s legacy of public land access—was filled in. Thanks to the land ethic and cooperation of the Campbell family—private landowners from Nelson County—317 acres surrounding Spy Rock were purchased through the National Park Service with funds provided by the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Consequently, a portion of the Appalachian Scenic Trail and the scenic view from the Rock were preserved while providing opportunities to better wildlife management and access for outdoor recreationists.

    Over the course of its 50-year history, the LWCF has effectively leveraged the preservation of over 5 million such acres.

    Unfortunately, in September of 2015, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the House Natural Resources Committee chairman, allowed the LWCF to expire, representing anti-federal leanings present in parts of the West where the majority of the country’s federal public land is located.

    Conceived in 1964, the LWCF embodies Congress’ bipartisan promise to work to preserve public natural areas, water resources, cultural heritage, and other recreational spaces in the American image—and at no cost to taxpayers. A small fraction of revenue generated from oil and gas companies drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf has historically provided Congress with up to $900 million dollars to be funneled into the Fund annually, though in recent years, about two thirds of that money has been rerouted to fund other, unrelated projects, and is untraceable. 

    The funds that are allocated to the Fund are divvied up into federal and state pools, to benefit an array of different spending projects. On the federal side, funds are utilized to purchase inholdings—swaths of privately-owned land within or adjacent to federally-owned public land. Interested landowners are offered fair market value by a land trust or group like the Nature Conservancy, and the land is then sold to the state or federal agency.

    State-allocated money is utilized more broadly. “State dollars flow to each state to spend on state parks, greenways, county parks, ballfields, trails, etc.,” said Jay Leutze, a trustee of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. “There is also a powerful part of the program called Forest Legacy that purchases conservation easements from working forest owners. They get to stay on the land, own it, timber it—Forever. It’s a great program that helps the local timber industry and families. Land gets protected and the government has no maintenance cost.”

    In August of 2015, Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, signed into effect the apportionment of $42.8 million to the states.

    Now that the LWCF is in limbo, so are the projects scheduled for the 2016 fiscal year. In Virginia alone, over $8 million dollars was on schedule to purchase land within the Washington-Jefferson National Forest. Still another $15 million was set to protect critical resources within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and the New River headwaters. While this money will still flow towards these projects this year, most of these deals will require more than a year’s time, and will likely outlast their monetary resources.

    Likewise, the expiration of the LWCF on September 30, earlier this year, was certainly counted as a loss within the sportsman’s community. However, no time has been lost in launching a campaign to reauthorize it with full funding.

    Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana told Backcountry Hunters and Anglers that reauthorization of the LWCF has “a higher probability if we attach it to another piece of legislation.” Senator Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, a local champion of the LWCF, continues to seek out that vehicle bill. Current candidates include the currently-proposed omnibus spending bill or a highway bill that will fund the Highway Trust Fund. Regardless, LWCF advocates must first convince Congressional leadership to allow the amendment of such a bill with the LWCF reauthorization provision.

    On the morning of November 5, Rep. Bishop presented a bill including his own changes to the LWCF, among them a call to limit federal land and water acquisition at 3.5 percent. He is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill on November 18—just three Congressional work days following this publication.

    It is critical to the future of public land and conservation that the LWCF be reauthorized (preferably, with full funding). Virginia’s own Rep. Rob Wittman, R-VA, currently sits on the House Natural Resources Committee, and has historically been in favor of the LWCF. As Virginia sportsmen, this is our point of contact. Make your voices heard.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

LAND & WATER CONSERVATION FUND SET TO EXPIRE IN 30 DAYS

Chances are good that the last time you spent time in your favorite outdoor setting, you spent it on land purchased by the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which is set to expire in 30 days.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Created in 1965 in a bipartisan Congressional agreement, the LWCF is a motor that carries with it the mission of protecting America’s natural areas, natural resources, and historical and cultural sites.  The initiative called for $900 million—a small fraction—of fees paid by offshore oil and gas mining companies to be appropriated into the fund annually.  The fund, then, was to be used to protect wilderness areas, national parks, working ranches, greenways, wildlife corridors, and riparian lands, and to assist in the building of parks, recreational sport fields, and trail systems in all 50 states.

    Around the financial and legislative power of the LWCF formed the LWCF Coalition, a grouping of over 1000 conservation groups across the country united for a common cause.  “My land trust, Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, is a member because we realize that in order to protect fragile lands along the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway we need a steady investment to meet our goals,” said Jay Leutze, a trustee of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy who enjoys hiking on and around the Appalachian Trail near his home in Asheville, North Carolina.  “Collectively we hope to raise our voices to tell the story that land conservation is a bipartisan no-brainer.  Everybody loves clean water and places to hike and camp.  But not everybody knows how much work goes into securing even a single acre of protection for future generations.”

Virginia, specifically, has received about $283 million over the past 50 years from the fund, protecting such cherished natural environments as the James River and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuges, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Jefferson/Washington National Forest. 

    However, the LWCF is much broader in its efforts than these nationally-recognized settings.  “A lot of the funding flows directly to Virginia so that local communities can create bike trails and greenways, and even soccer fields,” said Jay Leutze, a trustee for the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy who enjoys hiking on and around the Appalachian Trail.  “In Virginia there is a real challenge to create wildlife corridors and buffer historical sites from suburban sprawl.  LWCF is the best tool for protecting the places we all cherish.”

    Unfortunately, that tool has been underutilized over the course of its five-decade life.  “Dishonest budgeting” has been rampant—over $19 billion has been wrongly diverted from the LWCF account and utilized elsewhere over the last 50 years.  “That money would have gone a long way to fixing some of our half-finished national forests and state parks,” said Leutze.  “When landowners inside our national forests and along the routes of the Appalachian Trail are willing to sell for a fair price, we really need the funds to be available as intended.”

    Now, the LWCF is facing expiration on September 30, 2015, leaving only 30 days of Congressional work periods for action to take place.

    What’s more, Congress will not consider reauthorization of the LWCF as a stand-alone bill, only as an amendment to a more substantial piece of legislature.  In February 2015, Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina introduced Senate Bill 338, which is getting the most attention as a reauthorization vehicle.  The bill requires a minimum of 1.5 percent of the annual funding amount allocated to the LWCF to be used for improving public access to federally-owned public lands, while calling for the original LWCF Act of 1965 to be amended, making the fund a permanent program.

    The corresponding bill in the House, House Bill 1814, currently has over 100 co-sponsors—primarily Democrats.  Republican Representatives are hearing grievances from the dogged, right-wing, Cliven Bundy-type constituents who believe that the federal government has overgrown its borders and acquired too much land already.  Considering the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure the reauthorization of the LWCF which is the sportsman’s most valuable asset. 

    From the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in Virginia, to Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Canyon in the West, the LWCF is responsible for the protection of the special places that outdoor recreationists form strong ties with.  Economically, those lands support 9.4 million jobs and $730 billion of revenue annually nationwide, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.  The beauty of the program is that the funds are acquired from offshore drilling fees, not taxpayer dollars.

    Reauthorizing the LWCF is truly a “bipartisan no-brainer.”  Contact your representatives to let them know your wishes, and act fast.  Let’s preserve this conservation superpower while we still can.  

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

AMERICAN PUBLIC LANDS A SPIRITUAL TRADITION

Modern society has convinced the outdoorsman in me that I was born too late.  The rivers that I frequent are suppressed in spirit, their wonder restrained to their actual dimensions by urban sprawl, highways, and water treatment plants.  When I take to the field, I thirst for the refreshing experience of new waters; but I lust for those places tucked away, out of sight, lost in nature—where their essence extends for miles through some black hole of the mind, never threatened by development or the idea that they might, in some dimension, end.

The mighty Saco River at low water, crawling through a White Mountain valley.  Photo by Matt Reilly

    Development.  My parents know what it means.  Their age is told in their memories.  There was a time when Charlottesville, Virginia was not a city, but a town.  Before Walmart and Sam’s Club took their anarchical perch above Route 29, farmer Matheny tended to his cows on the grassy pasture behind a blackboard fence and an illusion that things might never change.  The Rivanna River, in the gulley behind Walton’s culturally-obese babies, coursed higher and stronger through the rolling hills of the Piedmont, its lifeblood not yet stolen by the host of housing developments to come, its finned inhabitants still unrestrained by dams.

    I hear these memories as a young child.  Fear briefly enters and exits my mind.  What will the world look like when I am grown?  But at 8 years old, as far as I know, things don’t change.

    I eventually learned my lesson.

    The woodlot that was destined to be subdivided behind our newly-furnished house was just large enough to be reminiscent of Maine’s “Big Woods” that I had learned of in Field and Stream.  If I walked along the length of the creekbottom, in the shadows of towering ridges, I could escape with the perception of total isolation.

    One spring, I happened upon a stream of moderate girth.  I returned countless times in following seasons, slinging spinners and flies to feisty panfish and pickerel. 

    One day I was startled by the sight of two houses.  Both were under construction; and their backyards had torn into the woodland veil protecting my secret gem, revealing it for all to see, eroding the banks, and slowing the current.

    Sour and cynical over the soiling of my stream, I retreated into my mind to a place where rivers run free and woods seem endless, where constant human activity does not hamper the wildlife activity, and the flora is ornamental by God’s design, rather than that of a landscaper.  It was from this experience that I began to crave wild lands removed from human occupation.

    By the time I earned my driver’s license I was a passionate fly fisherman, completely lost in the sport; and my search for new water took me to where my childhood fantasies existed in actuality—the Shenandoah National Park, where my dad had taken me to grouse hunt and trout fish at a very young age.  Now, with the means to transport myself, I set off into the Blue Ridge when I yearn for the tug of a sprightly brook trout.

    I drive west; and as the roads turn from pavement to gravel to dirt to nothing, and the hardwoods close in above my head as I’m intertwined into the deep, meandering hollows where the freestones run, the shackles of society and modern, complicated life disintegrate into the air.

    I can fish my way through the gorge that the Rapidan River flows through in consensual ignorance.  In my mind, the Park does not end, but extends forever in every direction, as does the river; and the fish in its watery depths are virgin natives—refugees, like me.

    When a brook trout comes to hand, my suspicion is upheld.  The fiery brilliance that adorns its belly and pectorals, the olive river rock along its back, accented by strong blue and red bull’s eyes make me believe that they are a purity in nature, a stronghold of all that has been lost in the world, safeguarded, hidden in the bottom of a mountain stream. 

    But alas, I know this illusion is false.  The trout in my hand is a species endangered by a host of man-made threats; and its range retreats into the mountaintops yearly.  However, unlike the Piedmont stream of my childhood, this one is protected, forever sealed from peripheral development by 197,000 acres of federally-protected land.  To the brook trout, and to me, that thought is full of hope; as it is a symbol of like-minded individuals concerned with the state of the environment doing their best to secure recreational areas and wildlife havens for future generations, to preserve our spiritual haunts.  In a word, it is a promise:  For as long as I, and my children, live, places like Shenandoah will be protected and cherished by sportsmen.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

SPORTSMEN--TOGETHER IN A WORLD OF WOUNDS

A sense of distant familiarity filled the brisk mountain air as my brother, Phillip, and I sliced a path through it with boots and fly rods, following rocky switchbacks and clambering over fallen trees along a footpath aimed at an intimate Blue Ridge hollow.  Irrigating the gorge 1,000 feet below was a favorite and well-known brook trout stream, but our sense of adventure was renewed, our minds overtaken by anticipation, as our feet treaded a course to a foreign stretch.  Fishing together has been rare since the pursuit of a college education relocated me 200 miles to the south, and so it seemed fitting to choose a venue of tradition for the day that we broke the fast.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Gurgling Appalachian Mountain water joined our downward venture when a narrow gut nuzzled the hillside trail.  An unnamed creek, a tributary beaded by lucid, globular pools, captured our passing fancy and required an impromptu plying with flies. 

    We split up.  Shortly, the modest trickle yielded a half dozen fiery-flanked brookies of respectable size, and I retired my preliminary efforts to the overlooking path, excited and ready to continue on to the main event.  Phillip was still fishing as I took a standing perch atop a rock mound to reflect and wait.

    A bluebird sky illuminated the forest floor, warming the ground and lighting diamonds on the riffles and runs of the brook trout’s home.  The warmth of spring tugged at young hardwoods, at the ground, drawing renewed life and its tell-tale buds of green from the ragged nooks of an otherwise harsh landscape.  There was not a road in sight, nor a human who was not diligently cracking away at a hungry trout.

    The air is stimulating and humbling in such places, tucked away in the folds of the developing world.  For a moment, I was comfortably engulfed by the emotions of wilderness, the unstudied potential of new water, and the impression that their influence was unrestrained. 

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Yet, I know too much.  As Aldo Leopold explained, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”  The water we were scheduled to meet by afternoon is plagued by the adverse effects of acid rain deposition, by no fault of the fragile brook trout or the caddisflies or the equally iconic black bears of the mountain setting, but by fault of humans in the adjacent, polluting, coal-producing region.  Regular water quality monitoring and treatment loan the native trout their health.

    Less than 24 hours prior, a press release landed in my inbox detailing the recently sealed fate of the Ozernaya River in Russia’s Kamchatka.  Gold was discovered in the headwaters of the river in 2004, and in 2013 plans to develop access roads and a road mine were made, stealing the “pristine” designation from the largest spring creek valley in the world.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate voted to support a budget resolution that would allow state governments to take over control, auction, or sell all federal public lands, except for national parks and monuments.  Sportsmen and women are undoubtedly the strongest advocates and defenders of our public lands.  Following the announcement that the number of Americans involved with hunting and fishing had dropped from approximately 40 million in 1991 to 34 million in 2006, this recent bout of immorality in the Senate is particularly ominous for the future of America’s outdoor heritage.

    On a more local level, New Mexicans are engaged in an ongoing, fist-clenched battle against Senate Bill 226, which threatens to eliminate their access to public waters.  Should the amendment, which contradicts the rights to public waters spelled out in the state’s constitution, be passed, New Mexicans will be stripped of their right to wade, float, or fish navigable, public waters which are bordered by private property.

    Incomparable and dwarfed in “ecological education” to Leopold, my foundational education mirrors his own.  I am an outdoorsman, and in reflecting upon the deeply personal relationship that I have with the outdoors I know one thing—that the stewardship and the quest for ecologically sustainable systems that I challenge my purpose in life with is a direct result of that foundational outdoor education, and that the future of our sports, our public lands, and our Earth rely upon the ongoing recruitment of such passions.

    Between the lines of the tense reports on issues that threaten the health of our environment and the access we currently enjoy to our woods and waters are the voices of sportsmen.  We know there are no “quick fixes” for these short-sighted, progress-guised adulterations, and understand our obligation to defend our natural resources tooth and nail against such baneful human activity.  Hope for the future resounds in those voices, united in a world of wounds.        

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

GETTING AHEAD OF LEAD

Outfitting oneself for the field is hardly an operation lacking technical options.  Terminal tackle—hooks, sinkers, etc.—and ammunition are no exception.  In recent years, tackle and ammunitions companies like Water Gremlin and Remington have begun to introduce eco-friendly sinkers and shells made of lead alternatives, like steel and tungsten, as a response to the rise in awareness of lead-related environmental effects.

Virginia has yet to see any specific lead tackle bans.  However, other states have placed state-wide bans on the use of lead sinkers; and the country, a ban prohibiting the use of lead shot by waterfowl hunters.  Ban or no ban, the responsible outdoorsman has an obligation get a lead on lead poisoning and support a healthy environment in any way possible.

    The state of California has made very clear the ill effects associated with lead; but why is it dangerous to wildlife?  The foremost biological concern is waterfowl mortality via an illness called lead toxicosis.  Lead toxicosis occurs when the lead concentration in the liver surpasses five PPM.

    According to the University of Vermont, the common loon, an endangered species in the state and the most common victim of fatal lead toxicosis in New England, can be killed by a single dose of only .3 grams of lead—the weight of even the smallest pinch-on sinkers.  Three decades ago, prior to any national lead-regulating laws, waterfowlers blanketed America’s wetlands with 5,997,084 pounds of lead shot pellets annually, or, pretending for a moment that each of these pellets weighed .3 grams, 9 billion potential loon-killers.

    With all that lead in the water, it’s no doubt that waterfowl were suffering.  Waterfowl have no teeth; and therefore, must ingest their food whole.  After eating, a small stone is swallowed and enters the gizzard to grind up food as part of the digestion process.  This is how lead toxicosis becomes a problem for our feathery friends.  A small piece of lead shot or a small sinker look similar to stones, and are commonly ingested by birds who mistake them as such.  The consequence is usually fatal.

    Finally, in 1991, lead shot shells disappeared from the waterfowl hunting scene following a ban the EPA placed on their use.  Five years after the ban was enacted, a studyconducted in the Mississippi flyway found that the number of cases of lead toxicosis in adult mallards had decreased an estimated 64%, totaling 1.4 million ducks spared from the fatal disease.

    Finding positive results after banning lead from our wetlands, it was only natural to seek out any other ill effects lead shot could cause.  Of course, waterfowl hunters were responsible for littering marshland with shot, and ultimately for a high number of bird mortality.  But what about shot dispersed by small and big game hunters?

    On firm ground, those suffering from lead poisoning are not the hunter’s quarry; and they become poisoned by another pathway.  Game animals that are shot with shotgun shells filled with lead pellets and are never recovered lay in the field to decompose, meaning two things:  a) an easy meal for scavengers and b) tainted meat.  Scavengers in Virginia included endangered birds of prey such as the peregrine falcon and bald eagle; and endangered bird species feeding on poisoned meat equals yet another reason for concern.

    As of yet, Virginia has no law against lead shot for general hunting or fishing tackle; but there are plenty of eco-friendly options available.  Steel and bismuth are common shot alternatives; and bead heads for flies and sinkers are manufactured from tin and tungsten.  All are readily available and are affordable options for the sportsman who desires to preserve and protect the Earth we were given.  There is an old saying that goes “, We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”  Bear that in mind.

Originally published in the Rural Virginian

A TRAGEDY IN LYNCHBURG AFFECTS ALL ON THE JAMES RIVER

    April 30, 2014--a chain of 13 railcars derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Six toppled into the adjacent James River, and nearly 25,000 gallons of crude oil poured into Virginia’s founding river in a disastrous display of billowing black smoke and fire.  \

thinkprogress.org photo

    A pessimist might mourn the loss of a great American river.  An optimist cringes, and turns a calloused eye to the blaze, hoping that those on the forefront will help Virginia awake from the nightmare.  But what does this really mean for Virginia’s River?  And how can such accidents be prevented elsewhere?

    The good news is that the oil being transported from the Bakken shale oil deposit in North Dakota is extremely flammable (not usually a plus), and sparked upon derailment, burning some of the contaminant into the atmosphere.

    What’s more, at the time of the spill the river was swollen from heavy rains in the James River Basin, hopefully dispersing the oil in the otherwise less-voluminous upper portion of the river.

In response to the accident, the Virginia Department of Health has issued a “recreational advisory” against such activities as swimming, wading, kayaking, and paddling in the river, from the origin of the spill in Lynchburg, to the oxbows and tidal reaches of Richmond.

    Due to the high flow of water, oil coursed the more than 100 miles to Richmond as early as May 1.  The state’s capital city is currently relying on a backup supply of drinking water; and Lynchburg’s supply was left unadulterated.

    No one was injured in the derailment, and clean water can still be attained; but the effect of the spill on the river’s diverse fish and wildlife populations will only be told through time.

A number of birds—eagles, osprey, seagulls, herons—count on the James River for sustenance.  Otters, muskrat, and beaver all construct family abodes in the clay banks.  Fish fin its waters, with no place to go.

    Ecologically, the timing of the spill is less-than-ideal.  Spring beckons waves of spawning shad and herring into the freshwater river to spawn and the birds of the riverine ecosystem are feeding chicks in nests.  This coincidence poses a multi-generational threat to the river’s inhabitants.

    Luckily, the James River Association, the James River’s premier confidant and safe keeper, led by Upper James Riverkeeper, Pat Calvert, is taking recovery measures.  Currently, the team is working with herpetologists who will assess the effect of the spill in amphibians of the river, which are effected by even the slightest amount of oil contaminant.

    This local tragedy has directed significant criticism towards the methods of transporting domestic oil.  The CSX line that the derailed train was traveling through Lynchburg follows the James River from its headwaters to its final destination in Yorktown, Virginia.

    Train routes have historically followed riverbeds for their relatively little grade and consequently-easy navigation.  In fact, many of the nation’s largest and most valuable rivers are paralleled by tracks that transport crude oil from the hydraulic fracturing site in North Dakota.  Thus the potential exists for oil spills in rivers across the country. 

    This has stirred the pot on transportation-related issues with conservation groups across the country, who hope to learn from the accident in Lynchburg, and prevent it from occurring on their river.  For as the transportation of crude oil increases in the United States, safety measures and regulations have lagged behind significantly.

    Following the spill in Lynchburg, the United States Department of Transportation presented the White House with a set of stricter guidelines for tank cars for review, to get the ball rolling. 

    Hudson Riverkeeper, Phillip Musegaas, prompted the government to ban all use of puncture prone tanks; and days later the Canadian government instituted a three-year phase-out plan for the DOT-111s that have derailed, caused pollution, and even killed people in Alabama, Quebec, North Dakota, and New Brunswick over the past year.

     Though it is a strong blow to the James River’s ecology, the river system should recover from the spill; for toxic spills are no strangers to its waters.  Still, there will be consequences, and we can only hope that this incident is looked upon as an example and a warning for what can happen as a result of poor transportation regulations.  Those with the time, means, and inspiration, I urge you to care and get involved.  Here’s how:  www.jamesriverassociation.com.