By Stephen Smoot
Most who follow the work of the Chesapeake Bay Program, its partners, and stakeholders, pay significant attention to the blue crab industry. Crab fishing provides a strong boost to Maryland and Virginia and serves as part of the Old Line State’s identity.
Improved conditions in the Bay, however, also correlated with the expansion of crab predator species, such as blue catfish. Even with encouragement to increase catfish catches, blue crab numbers have dropped in recent years.
Its focus, however, extends to streams throughout the watershed. That includes normally continuous running streams throughout the area where waters eventually drain into the Chesapeake Bay, including the entire Potomac Highlands.
West Virginia has done more to reduce stream pollutants than any other state in the Chesapeake Bay region, consistently meeting federal benchmarks and mandates. Pollutants from agriculture, industry, and sewage systems have dropped considerably. the West Virginia Department of Agriculture and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection worked with non-government partners such as the West Virginia Poultry Association and Trout Unlimited.
Alone among all Chesapeake Bay state members, West Virginia refused to adopt United States Environmental Protection Agency recommended punitive policies to punish farmers, landowners, and others. Instead, state agencies relied heavily on Trout Unlimited, conservation districts, other organizations, and the goodwill of locals who shared the dream of restoring fish numbers.
Dustin Wichterman of Trout Unlimited, who is based on the North Fork River in Pendleton County, told Bay Journal in January of this year “it took us close to 10 years to get a stronghold and for people to recognize that we were there. Now people are knocking on our doors.”
A decade ago, Wichterman and Trout Unlimited, along with state agency representatives, held a meeting at Seneca Rocks with then-Congressman Alex Mooney. They discussed how they planned to restore the brook trout habitat using features from the nearby landscape to restore a more natural streambed using fallen trees, vegetated buffers, and other items.
Representatives also shared that West Virginia’s reliance on non profits and voluntary incentive programs led to higher success rates of cooperation than state government threats elsewhere in the Bay region. That success may have led to the newest watershed agreement draft stating that “one of the most important lessons the partners have learned from the past four decades is that although watershed-wide partnerships can help to coordinate and catalyze progress, implementation is locally inspired and driven.”
Areas of need were identified, the Bay Journal shared, from “satellite and LiDar remote sensing images to learn where streams had lost sheltering trees and suffered from erosion.
The Bay Journal reported success through statistics. It stated that “more than 400 farms in five counties have added best-management practices.” This has helped to restore “more than 100 miles of streams” and “some 1.5 million feet of fence” now stand as barriers between cattle and the streams, keeping out damaging “trampling” and excretions.
Over the years, funding for these efforts has grown from $300,000 to over $6 million per year, half from the federal government and the other half from Trout Unlimited.
Last year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation blog spotlighted work by Brandon Keplinger, who works in a fish hatchery near Wardensville operated by West Virginia University. Keplinger quipped to the blog that brook trout are “more native than we are. It’s a really cool, heritage-related organism to this area, especially in the mountainous areas where a lot of my family has grown.”
Keplinger and his colleagues work to release juvenile brook trout into waters with ideal conditions for growth and eventual reproduction. Trout Unlimited provides information on sections of streams that give young fish the best chance.
He wrote up a scientific paper while serving as a representative of the WV DNR, explaining that brook trout of specific native “heritage lineage” “would be raised to fingerling stage for the purpose of repatriation attempts where management actions have putatively improved the likelihood of inhabitation of recipient streams.”
The 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement set out a goal of an eight percent increase in natural brook trout habitat by 2025. As of 2024, that had only increased by a net of 0.5, but the South Branch watershed saw a number of areas of expansion. The report stated that a number of areas marginal, but inhabited by brook trout contracted as efforts by the Program and supporting organizations expanded elsewhere.
An original goal of eight percent expansion may have been too optimistic. New watershed goals set for 2040 include “increase brook trout occupancy by 1.5 percent (233 miles) in watersheds supporting healthy populations while achieving no net loss in other watersheds”, “Increase abundance at 10 long-term monitoring sites., reduce identified threats by 15 percent to increase brook trout resilience in watersheds supporting healthy populations.
Chesapeake Progress shared in 2024 that that since 2016, “in marginal habitats, brook trout populations continue to decline due to habitat loss, competition from non-native species and changes in land use and environmental conditions. The resources available to mitigate these impacts are insufficient to sustain and restore brook trout populations at the scale that is necessary to achieve our goal. Intervention and data support are needed to increase the implementation and monitoring of conservation and restoration activities.”
Hardy County’s brook trout habitat occupies, in general, the middle and some eastern sections of the county. The South Branch River itself and its forks do not carry brook trout downstream into Hardy County at this point.
Additions to the brook trout habitat occurred in different areas. About four and a half square miles on the Hardy and Grant county line along Corridor H near Fish Pond Road have emerged as a new habitat. Nearly 30 square miles of new habitat formed in the highlands between the South Fork and South Branch valleys. Another 30 square miles now hosts brook trout just west and north of Lost City.
Other new hardy habitats include two areas totaling 15 square miles between Baker and the Hampshire County line as well as another 30 square miles south and east of Wardensville.
Currently brook trout habitats occupy just over 12,000 square miles in the entire Chesapeake Bay region with about 7,800 of those exclusive to that species.
