Minnesota needs more stream stewards

trout stream with habitat improvement

Photo by J. Harrington

Minnesota is not the first place that comes to mind when world class trout fishing is mentioned. Some folks down in SE Minnesota, driftless area that stretches into Wisconsin, Iowa an Illinois are working on changing that. This morning we visited the National Trout Center in Preston. We also discovered some trout water with the appearance of some of the English chalk streams we've seen in pictures. The proportion of "designated trout water" on which one could actually cast a fly is disappointing, but Trout Unlimited, especially the local Hiawatha chapter, in partnership with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and local farmers are improving the balance with habitat improvement projects.

stream stewardship partners

Photo by J. Harrington

Governor Dayton is partway through his series of town hall meetings focused on improving Minnesota's water quality. Not every stream in Minnesota is, or could be, a trout stream, but every one could probably support more recreational uses if there were more access, more promotion and education about the local resources, and more partnerships to enhance the value of Minnesota's waters. Does every river and stream in Minnesota have its own watershed association? Is each and every watershed in Minnesota identified at every bridge crossing and watershed boundary? People don't tend to care much about things they're uneducated about. Much of Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's information is technical and bureaucratic. That's also true to a lesser degree about MNDNR. Minnesota needs more stream stewards, such as Trout Unlimited or the Friend of the Mississippi River. The National Trout Center offers at least one model of the kind of benefits such partnerships can create.

                     Magnitudes

By Howard Nemerov

Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come

But relentless when it does. It has to do

With catastrophic change, and with the limit

At which one order more of Magnitude

Will bring us to a qualitative change

And disasters drastically different

From those we daily have to know about.

As with the speed of light, where speed itself

Becomes a limit and an absolute;

As with the splitting of the atom

And a little later of the nucleus;

As with the millions rising into billions—

The piker’s kind in terms of money, yes,

But a million² in terms of time and space

As the universe grew vast while the earth

Our habitat diminished to the size

Of a billiard ball, both relative

To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves,

The doubling numbers, the earth could accommodate.

We stand now in the place and limit of time

Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream,

And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark

Seem on the point of bringing into day

The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up.

One or another nightmare may come true,

And what to do then? What in the world to do?

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