Saving Where the Wild Trout Are

There were wild fingerling brookies in this pool when I visited yesterday.  Further downstream is a pool with scores of fish, including native trout that are well over a foot in length. No one stocks this stream, and very few know the value of what it contains.

I am working with a landowner to save over 1,300 feet of frontage along this trout stream through the donation of a conservation easement to a local land trust.  It is a small strip of deciduous forest with a very special stream, as important in its own way as a large farm parcel or forest tract is for protecting those resources.

Eastern brook trout have completely vanished from nearly 40% of the subwatersheds where they histoically occur in the Highlands region that runs between south Central Pennsylvania and the MA/CT line.  We have some of the most intact and productive wild trout streams that remain in the region here in Northwest Connecticut.  This is one of them.