West Virginia’s Trout Streams Cry Out for Protection

By DON GASPER

I thank Tyler Evert of the Daily Mail for his excellent article about Wilderness designation on the Monongahela.

I would point out that for the first time in 25 years, Congress has seized an opportunity to permanently protect some of the most special remaining wild places in the Monongahela National Forest.

While we are grateful for the bill being considered, it is seriously deficient in that it has omitted two of the most important areas with respect to trout.

Marvelous natural treasures, Seneca Creek and the East Fork of the Greenbrier River ,are two of our most prized trout fisheries, contained within some of the wildest and most important roadless areas of our state.

Brook trout are found only in the coldest and purest streams, such as these. They are rare in the vast landscape beyond the Monongahela Forest. Primarily found in little disturbed, generally remote watersheds, brook trout define pristine, high-quality water.

The major factor harmful to trout is sediment caused by watershed disturbance. Trout eggs must spend the entire winter under the gravel, where they are much more easily smothered by sediment than other fish eggs, all of which hatch during the summer in three weeks or less.

Because much of the watersheds of these two trout streams has not been disturbed in the past 100 years, stream channel recovery and healing is just now beginning. This must be a top-down recovery.

Wilderness protection will allow the recovery of these headwater areas and eventually will reduce the terrible flooding in the communities below.

Only Wilderness designation will permanently protect these headwater streams from the negative impacts of roads and logging, which increase sediment directly from the disturbance of the forest floor. The reduction in forest canopy from logging also causes increased peak flows following rain events, leading to increased stream bank erosion and bottom "scour."

This kind of erosion can actually produce more sediment than the ground disturbance associated with logging.

Seneca Creek and the East Fork Greenbrier are fortunate to benefit from the limestone geology found in their watersheds. While acid rain has impacted many other headwater streams in our state, these two have a natural buffer, making liming unnecessary.

Seneca Creek, with its erosion-prone Red Shale geology, is a prime example of a stream that would benefit from Wilderness protection. It has a rare wild rainbow trout population with many spectacular waterfalls.

It is the Monongahela’s centerpiece. It is listed among America’s 100 best trout streams.

Wilderness is the watershed management most conducive to healing and recovery of trout streams.

Wilderness designation will protect them from future threats, and would assure minimal disturbance.

In addition to the benefits to soil, water and wildlife resources, protecting these places is most likely to provide the largest possible benefits to overall biodiversity within these tracts. Wilderness designation is the best and strongest tool available to citizens and to the U.S. Forest Service to protect these places and allow them to recover from disturbances of the past.

These proposed Wilderness Areas are ecological anchors in a fragile landscape – a taproot into the original forest. If these wild places in the Monongahela are protected, this beloved forest could again resonate with the wildness of the Old Forest.

So while the legislation is an important moment for the forest, it misses an opportunity to protect these most important wild, roadless areas.

Urge Congresswoman Capito to include Seneca Creek, and Congressman Rahall to include East Fork Greenbrier in the bill.

We may not have this opportunity again.

Gasper, of Buckhannon, is retired from the state Division of Natural Resources, where he began his career as a fisheries biologist. He was in charge of fisheries on the Monongahela for seven years. He has studied the high-quality trout streams of the West Virginia highlands ever since.

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