Welcome to the latest installment of the Wednesday Wake-Up Call, a roundup of the most pressing conservation issues important to anglers. Working with our friends at Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, The Everglades Foundation, Captains for Clean Water, VoteWater.org, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, and Conservation Hawks (among others), we’ll make sure you’ve got the information you need to understand the issues and form solid opinions.
1. Discharges from Lake Okeechobee Continue to Wreak Havoc
Image courtesy Captains for Clean Water
We are in the fourth week of discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers, and there are worrying signs for the effects on the estuaries on both coasts of Florida. We’ve already seen the blue water turn brown and black in places, as freshwater intrudes on what should be a saltwater environment. Now, the Florida Department of Health in Okeechobee County has issued a health alert for the presence of harmful blue-green algal toxins in the northern side of Lake Okeechobee. If these algae move into the rivers, we could be looking at a repeat of the “lost summer” of 2013.
Click here for the full story
Related Stories:
2. Pennsylvania’s Trout Fishing Streams: Why They Lack Full Protection
Four times each year, Pennsylvania’s Fish and Boat Commission proposes a number of streams for conservation protections. These streams are given a designation based on how sustainable their trout populations are, and we help ensure that our members’ voices are heard by the state during each of these cycles.
What folks might not understand is that some trout streams the commission recommended for full protection to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) years ago still haven’t received these safeguards – or why that’s happening.
Click here for the full story from TRCP and TAKE ACTION
3. 10 Things We Can Do to Protect Our Fisheries in 2024
Writing in Hatch Magazine, Todd Tanner offers a helpful list of ways you can have an impact in 2024:
It’s 2024 and far too many of our fisheries here in the U.S. are in serious trouble. Fortunately, there are some positive steps each of us can take going forward. While not every suggestion below will be a good fit for every single angler, be sure to check as many as possible off the list this year.
Click here for the full article in Hatch Magazine
Credit: Source link
