Back the Brookie/Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture: Back the Brookie is a Trout Unlimited multi-state program comprising 17 states from Maine to Georgia. Our goal is to conserve, protect, and restore brook trout throughout their native range. Within each state volunteers are:
Contacting elected officials in order to improve air and water quality, and reduce emissions that cause acid rain;
Developing education programs to teach youth about the importance of clean water, clean air, and healthy watersheds;
Conducting conservation projects to improve water quality and fish habitat, and to restore brook trout to their native streams.
For additional information on the EBTJV pleaseclick here
TU is a partner in the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture (EBTJV); the nation's first pilot project under the National Fish Habitat Initiative, which directs locally-driven efforts that build private and public partnerships to improve fish habitat. The long-term goals of the EBTJV are to develop a comprehensive restoration and education strategy to improve aquatic habitat, to raise education awareness, and to raise federal, state and local funds for brook trout conservation.
Brookie - Photo by Brent Golladay
i-81care Interstate 81 Coldwater Area Restoration Effort:
In partnership with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited has initiated a long-term campaign to conserve, protect, and restore coldwater streams in the valleys and mountains in the Interstate 81corridor which stretches from Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee 325 miles north to the West Virginia border above Winchester.
Called the Interstate-81 Coldwater Area Restoration Effort or 'I81 - CARE,' the campaign's goals are to reduce pollution and thus improve habitat for trout in the headwaters of five major rivers: Shenandoah, James, Roanoke, New, and Upper Tennessee. The Status and Threats report from the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture noted that the I - 81 corridor's streams once were prime habitat for brook trout, the state's fish, but that the land use practices of the 1900s caused the trout to retreat to the high mountain headwaters where they are only found today. I81 - CARE is the product of a series of stakeholder meetings begun in April, 2007. About the same time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service transferred a full - time habitat specialist located in Wise, Va. to TU providing us with our first full-time position in the state. The employee, Ray Mullins, is focusing almost entirely on brook trout habitat.
Stream improvement on the South River done iwth help from Shenandoah Chapter of TU - Photo by Beau Beasley
Shenandoah Home Rivers Initiative In addition, TU is in the process of seeking funding to underwrite a Shenandoah Home Rivers Initiative that will work for the restoration of brook and other trout species in the spring creeks and mountain headwaters. A new partnership with Orvis is developing a broad-scale conservation effort in the Roanoke River watershed and discussions are just beginning with Appalachian Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, concerning habitat restoration in the Virginia and West Virginia sections of the New River watershed.
Photo by Beau Beasley
Prioritizing Conservation Easements
VCTU sees conservation easements as the primary vehicle for ensuring long-term habitat health on private land. To that end, it is collaborating with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) on the development of templates for conservation and recreational access easements. So that VOF staffers can better assess the trout conservation significance of Virginia streams, TU's Nat Gillespie is working with the foundation to incorporate CSI data into VOF's GIS system.
