Stream Restoration: Cure or Disease

In this episode I sit down with Professor of Fluvial Geomorphology Doug Thompson to discuss the overwhelming failure of engineered instream structures to help streams over the past century. In fact, engineered instream structures have harmed and scared many streams in that timeframe by destroying channel complexity, preventing tree growth in the riparian zone, decreasing ground water/spring recharge, and creating a habitat thats hostile to native fish. Further we discuss examples like stream projects at fishermen’s Paradise and how they were considered a “success” by Pennsylvania Fish and Boat because of their popularity with anglers who lined up by the thousands to catch stocked trout in the easy to fish “holes” created by the rock and log engineered structures. However, ecologically these projects were a failure because they stopped the stream from moving naturally in the flood plain as well as stopped the stream from engaging the flood plain. We also discuss how this unregulated wild wild west of building faulty instream structures like J-hooks, deflectors, mudsills, lunker bunkers, and backwards rootwads continues today despite a century of failures and lots of evidence they do more harm than good. Doug talks about how Pennsylvania fish and boat commission’s habitat manual still displays extremely harmful and misinformed structures like Jack Dams. We discuss Dorothy Merritts and her discovery that legacy sediment is covering many of our stream valleys hiding what true pre colonial reference conditions for our streams would have been. We discuss legacy sediment removal as an exciting new technique with promise that creates a flood plain and lets the stream channel establish itselft where it wants to as well as move around on the flood plain. We discuss my conversation with Dorothy Merritts about how streams were likely not single channel morphology and were more likely channel networks with islands, side channels, and anastomosing channels. I talk about the growing fisheries science consensus that single channel stream restorations are bad for native brook trout and facilitate invasion of their havitat by non-native brook trout. Doug talks about the benefits of overly wide streams that form islands and in crease the fraction of the stream covered by tree canopy on the islands and in the riparian zone. We talk about the thermal benefits of legacy sediment removal and flood plain connection causing more downwelling and ground water recharge that makes streams colder. Finally doug gives advice to anglers and conservationists looking to get into stream work on how to “do no harm” and avoid working with rock, big boulders, and not over engineering large woody debris. We talk about Doug’s book The Quest For The Golden Trout and how it captures the synergistic consequences of hatchery trout and engineered stream projects as far as harming aquatic ecosystems and native species. Any serious angler or conservationist will enjoy this eye opening discussion about how we need to fix stream “restoration.”

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Buy Douglas Thompson’s Book The Quest for The Golden Trout

https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwis5dHQ8oOSAxUwQf8BHXvrPFgYACICCAEQABoCbWQ&co=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrOXR0PKDkgMVMEH_AR176zxYEAAYASAAEgL_dfD_BwE&sph&cid=CAAS0gHkaKhTg55oda2mMs3p_3BHBOl3VYEo19cNZeX3iYIp-IdFczIG5H3rBmvhZOk_KSsK_e1cjP2tGtHay1H2NwnqShbvHaD8fegJzjX5Wp8xPRdWSfQh1eiF5zzBZCwGqM3ebYUCNUVsqKINimzTSIl0ClcBbp0eMKHJE9E7zdl7bXWex55Pn-YVp-lW8hOl4aV6SIM_QeCIloj-IUQOCYg5WPicH5P1JAdCJBSvKvgPqa47lpt0oEdorPwZz4x7S9O8lCR646o5xJAsDCkk83TQGIg&cce=1&sig=AOD64_16CuJ7NSvuo1-KVRTEWEG2LagKaA&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjNicvQ8oOSAxUtrokEHURsLrQQ0Qx6BAgUEAE

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