Protect Madison's trout streams

More should be done to protect trout fishing in Madison County’s Robinson and Rose rivers – the beautiful streams that tumble from headwaters high in the mountains surrounding Syria. Scientists say acid rain is sharply reducing numbers of the fish – it’s already said to have wiped out wild brook trout in a third of Virginia’s 500 trout streams. This is particularly alarming because brook trout – the Virginia state fish – are more pollution resistant than many other types of fish.

Acid rain comes from high concentrations of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere. While rural Madison County is – thankfully — virtually free of any industrial air polluters, its mountains act as magnets that catch emissions that blow in from coal-burning power plants in Ohio and other Midwestern states – wind patterns direct the airborne acid particles here and they enter the soil at our higher elevations, eventually washing into the streams and endangering fish.

Ironically, the federal government’s 1990 Clean Air Act has significantly reduced new acid rain influxes, but the problems with acid rain endangering fish continue. Why? The heavy acid rain deposits from previous years remain locked in the soil. As we have seen happen in other situations – the national debt comes to mind – one generation is left to clean up the mess left by previous ones.

Some researchers say it will take more than a hundred years for the existing acid rain deposits to fall to acceptable levels. If this is the case, will wild trout
even still exist at all in the Robinson and Rose rivers in the year 2108? And if they are lost, there will be more problems than just some guys in wading boots, toting fly rods annoyed there’s no fish to catch. The whole ecological ladder loses more and more stability as its rungs are ripped out, until the whole thing collapses and an ecosystem disappears.

There are some ways to counter this. In the St. Mary’s River in Augusta County, a trout stream similar to Madison’s, 40 tons of lime are dumped into its headwaters every few years. Perhaps doing something similar in Madison County might help – scientists should investigate that possibility.

More programs like a recent one offered by the nonprofit conservation group Trout Unlimited at Graves Mountain Lodge in Syria are helpful. During a special camp, group members taught high school students the importance of protecting cold-water fisheries.

It’s been said before, but bears repeating – the Robinson and Rose rivers — and all of Madison’s mountain trout streams — merit strong preservation efforts. They are to these parts what the Grand Canyon is to Arizona – a natural treasure.