Giving Tuesday This past week, after the back-to-back shopping orgies of Black Friday (which now seems to start Wednesday evening!), Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, we celebrated Giving Tuesday, a day when we're encouraged to be philanthropic. Here are four stories about individuals who were giving in ways that benefitted trout or the people who love them. First, an "origin story." In 1988, Maryellen Soarino, who grew up in my hometown, the bucolic Jersey City, NJ--just kidding!--was a 30-year-old 4th grade teacher in northern New Jersey. Her curriculum called for studying the state of New Jersey, and through that process, her students discovered that New Jersey had a state flower, a state bird, and lots of other state things, but no state fish. They decided to fix that problem; and, while there were many ups and downs in the campaign process, four years later, New Jersey had a state fish, the brook trout. Yeah, 4th graders! Yeah, Maryellen! But Maryellen didn't stop there. Not long after, in 1991, Maryellen introduced her students to what we now know as the Trout in the Classroom program. She called it Project HATCH at the time. What did they raise? Brook trout, of course! While TIC traces its roots to Canadian school salmon programs that started in the 1970s (which then spread southward into California in the 1980s), there were no trout in classrooms anywhere else in the country until Maryellen got her inspired idea. After she demonstrated how well it could work, TIC spread rapidly, first to NYC and then to what ultimately became 33 states across the country. It even made it to Vermont! Thank you, Maryellen! We wouldn't be here without your brilliant and generous work as a teacher. P.S.: She's still at it! Next, a story about environmental activists giving a river back to their region The Clyde River, in the Northeast Kingdom, used to have legendary runs of landlocked Atlantic salmon that came by the thousands out of the depths of Lake Memphremagog every fall and swam up the lake's tributaries, especially the Clyde, to spawn. The reputation of the fishery brought anglers by the trainload from as far away as New York, Boston, and Montreal. When the salmon were running, all Newport, Vermont's, hotels were sold out! That began to change, however, as more and more hydroelectric dams were built on the river, the "dagger in the heart" was the dam that went up in 1957. As a result, for many decades, salmon fishing was just a fond memory of local old-timers. Above is a glimpse of what downtown Newport looked like in the heyday of the salmon runs. But what about that picture of Ian Sweet that I included in last week's blog? Wasn't he holding a huge landlocked salmon? Well, things are a lot better now, and the salmon are back. This story, of another form of generosity, was told in the Summer 1995 issue of Trout Unlimited's Trout magazine. Here's the cover: What happened is that a May 1, 1994, spring "freshet" on the Clyde blew out a portion of an important dam on the river. In that same timeframe, the company that owned the dam was in the process of seeking to get it relicensed, something that has to be done every 50 year through a process, overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC. That's when environmental activism kicked in. Several groups, including the Northeast Kingdom chapter of Trout Unlimited (now defunct), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council joined by impassioned local citizens organized to fight the dam's relicensing. Especially in an age of concern about climate change, hydroelectric power has many benefits, but in this case the economic benefits of the dam were modest, and the environmental and economic benefits of reestablishing this historic fishery were judged to be far greater. I've scanned the 23-year-old article by John Dillon and put it in a folder on our Google Docs site. Here's a link to that folder: Streamside "philanthropy" So, here's an interesting coda to my story about Ian Sweet's recent fishing accomplishments on the Clyde. Ironically, one of our TIC/SIC teachers may have had an important role in helping Ian tie into that fish. When Ian arrived at the Clyde that morning, he realized that he had left his flies at home. Fortunately, he ran into Chris Murphy, TIC teacher at North Country Union High School, who gave him several of his flies. Great going, Chris. I hope the fishing gods reward you for your generosity someday with an equally impressive salmon! TIC philanthropy And I would be remiss if, in this blog post in which I celebrate Giving Tuesday, I didn't also acknowledge the many individuals and groups that have supported TIC in Vermont. Over the past four years, numerous Vermont schools have gotten equipment and supplies, and financial contributions to our annual workshop, through donations and awards from the following foundations, organizations, and philanthropists:
Saving the brook trout Steve Flint, of Mary Hogan School, told me about a great WCAX story that I had missed. It aired on Tuesday, November 27, and was called "Saving the brook trout." It's about the habitat improvement work that's taking place on brook trout streams in the Northeast Kingdom. It also explains why it's necessary to do this sort of work. (What's your guess? Why would streams in a remote, heavily forested part of the state far from development and industry need improvement?) Here's a link to the video. This video is somewhat similar to a story that aired on the PBS Outdoor Journal program a couple of years ago. You can find that story and a dozen others on the Other Trout Videos page of this Web site. So you don't have to hunt for that page, here's a link. Finally, as they say in the closing moments of the cooking competition shows I like to watch, "Put it on the plate!" This blog hasn't really addressed the process of doing the TIC program. But we're at a critical point for that. By now, you should have received all your equipment and set it up. I hope that includes getting your bottle of Tim's ammonium chloride (see the 11/14/18 blog). Because we're just a few days away from December 3rd, when you'll want to start the pre-cycling process. This is described on pages 19 & 20 of the current VTTIC Manual. We believe pre-cycling will greatly reduce water chemistry problems. If you want to review how to do this, in addition to reading those two pages of the Manual, you can also watch Robb Cramer's presentation at the recent TIC workshop (below).
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Joe Mark is Lead Facilitator of Vermont's Trout in the Classroom program.In June 2012, I retired after 40 years in higher education, having spent the last 32 years of my career as dean at Castleton. One of the first things I volunteered to do in retirement was to work with a parent-friend to help the Dorset School, where his kids and my Vermont grandkids attend, start a TIC program. Gradually that commitment grew into my current role, which is both demanding and highly rewarding. Archives
December 2019
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