 |
Photo by Tom Henecker |
Victor Sasse and
Jim Nash, shown fishing the Hudson near the hamlet of North
River, contend that dam releases for summer rafting are jeopardizing
the river’s trout. |
Casting doubt
By Phil Brown
Charles Barber remembers fishing the Hudson
Gorge in the old days. He’d be the only one on the river,
casting a line into the clear, rushing water while listening to
the birds chatter and watching for deer and otter.“I’m
out there for the enjoyment of nature,” he said. “You
see a beautiful trout jump out of a pool—that’s good
for the soul. You used to be able to get that in the Hudson Gorge.”
A Minerva resident, Barber had been fishing the gorge since 1958,
but he stopped going there a decade ago. He said things just haven’t
been the same since rafting became popular on the remote stretch
of the Hudson.
“All of a sudden you’ll start hearing laughter and yelling,
and then 10 or 15 rafts go by,” he said. “You’d
think you were in Times Square. It just shatters the beauty of the
place.”
Yet Barber, who is now 60, and several other anglers fear that the
rafting business is not only disturbing the peace, but also harming
the river and its trout. To accommodate the rafters, the town of
Indian Lake releases huge volumes of water from Lake Abanakee, creating
a “bubble” that enables white-water enthusiasts to ride
through the gorge even in summer, when the river is naturally low.
The critics contend that the bubble carries away insects that trout
feed on and warms the cold-water spots where the fish seek refuge
on hot days. As a result, they say, fewer trout survive from year
to year.
“The fishing dropped off,” Barber said. “It was
just like turning the lights off when they started rafting that
river.”
If you talk to the rafting outfitters, many of whom double as fishing
guides, you’ll get a different story. “Fishing has not
been impacted in the least,” declared Pete Burns, owner of
Beaver Brook Outfitters, one of a dozen rafting companies that operate
on the Hudson. “I’ve lived here my whole life,”
he added. “If I honestly felt this was harming the ecosystem,
I would not be for it.”
The Explorer asked several anglers if fishing on the Hudson
and the Indian River, where raft trips begin, is not as good today
as in years past. Suffice it to say that there are strong opinions
on both sides.
Yet Leon Szeptycki, the Eastern conservation director of Trout Unlimited,
said he has no doubt, based on research on other rivers, such as
the Housatonic in Connecticut, that the dam releases are harming
the ecosystem. “It’s got to be having some negative
effect on fish and bug habitat,” he said. “It’s
just a question of how much.”
 |
Illustration by Mike
Storey |
Such talk challenges the conventional wisdom
that Hudson River rafting is a benign business—the very sort
of eco-tourism, in fact, that environmentalists usually champion.
If the critics are right, the state Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) could find itself under pressure to rein in an
industry that attracts 20,000 customers a year, employs dozens of
people and contributes roughly $10 million to the local economy.
Indian Lake Supervisor Barry Hutchins said rafters help keep the
town’s restaurants and motels, as well as the local outfitter,
in the black. “We don’t want to hurt the fishing,”
Hutchins said, “but we definitely don’t want to lose
rafting.”
The rafting companies pay Indian Lake $70,000 a year to release
water several days a week from the municipal dam on Lake Abanakee.
The dam is opened for anywhere from one to two hours, creating a
surge of water that courses down the Indian River for three miles
to the Hudson and then continues through the gorge and on to North
Creek. The releases allow outfitters to schedule trips and take
reservations knowing that there always will be sufficient water
for the 17-mile ride.
Rafting on the Hudson first took off in the 1980s. Until recently,
nearly all commercial trips occurred in spring, when melting snow
and frequent rains swell the river. Business had reached a plateau
when, four years ago, the outfitters began offering summer trips
and attracting people who prefer to ride the river when the water
is warmer and tamer. “Summer dam releases saved the rafting
industry,” Burns said.
Those summer releases are what most concerns Jim Nash: He wants
DEC to ban them. Nash, who has fished the Hudson since 1957, notes
that brown trout congregate in cold-water spots near springs and
tributaries when the river heats up in summer. That’s because
warm water can stress and even kill trout. When their refuges are
swamped by the bubble, he said, water temperature can shoot up to
lethal levels. “We have a wild river, and we’re treating
it like a Great Escape water chute,” he complained.
Although Nash worries most about summer rafting, he also would like
to see releases in spring and fall prohibited when the river is
running low or when the water temperature is running high. Others
argue that rafters should not rely on dam releases at all.
A retired GE engineer from Glens Falls, Nash started pestering DEC
a few years ago to look into rafting’s ecological impacts.
In 1999, Larry Strait, the agency’s regional fisheries manager,
wrote him that the river is too warm anyway to support many “holdover
trout”—fish that survive for years. “It’s
difficult for me to justify opposition to summer releases based
on temperature in a system that’s lethal regardless,”
Strait said.
Nash was flabbergasted. Over the years, he and his friends had caught
many large brown trout, some 20 inches long. These had to be holdovers,
not recently stocked fish, he said. “For him to stick his
big toe in the water and say there’s no fish . . .”
Nash’s voice trailed off.
Rather than let the matter drop, Nash started a petition drive at
North Country Sports, a fly-fishing shop in North River owned by
Victor Sasse, a retired DEC forest ranger. About 18 months ago,
Nash gave the agency the signatures of 155 fishermen who disagreed
with Strait’s conclusion that the Hudson supports few holdover
trout. The petition also called for restrictions on dam releases
that would, in effect, prohibit summer rafting.
|
After the petition drive, Nash said, DEC agreed to measure the temperature
at the mouth of Thirteenth Lake Outlet, one of the many tributaries
on the Hudson where trout gather on hot days. On one August afternoon,
the water temperature was hovering between 71 and 75 degrees. When
the bubble passed through, it suddenly jumped to 82 degrees.
Szeptycki, of Trout Unlimited, said brown trout start to feel stress
when water temperature reaches the mid-70s. They can survive in
warmer water for short periods, he said, “but if they get
exposed to it every day, it affects their overall health.”
Brook trout, which also live in the Hudson, are even more sensitive.
A few months ago, DEC acknowledged that summer rafting “may
have a significant adverse environmental impact.” The agency
is preparing a report that will assess the situation and recommend
ways to mitigate ecological damage. DEC spokesmen refused to discuss
the report, but an agency scientist wrote Nash that it will conclude
that releases do indeed swamp cold-water refuges and reduce the
abundance of insects—and hence jeopardize the survival of
trout.
But Nash is still not happy. Although the draft report will propose
that summer rafting be limited to four days a week, that represents
no change in current policy. “You’re going to do something
destructive, but you’re going to do it only four out of seven
days?” he remarked, incredulous. “The whole solution
is crazy.”
DEC also plans to propose stocking large brown trout in the Hudson
Gorge, but that doesn’t satisfy Nash either. He and his fellow
anglers want the gorge to be home to wild trout, not fish raised
on food pellets in hatcheries. They say wild trout, besides tasting
better, pose a greater challenge to the fly-fisherman. Charles Barber
likens catching stocked trout, which develop aggressive feeding
instincts in the hatchery ponds, to shooting game in a fenced-in
yard. “To me, that’s not trout fishing,” he said.
“When you go into the beautiful wilds of the Adirondacks,
you don’t want to catch stocked trout.”
Szeptycki said he’d like to see DEC do more field research
before making any decisions. “What worries me about the Hudson
is that it hasn’t been studied thoroughly,” he said.
“We just don’t know how [dam releases are] affecting
the trout population.”
One of the agency’s own biologists pushed for a detailed study
of rafting’s effect on fish habitat and insects 14 years ago—long
before the advent of summer rafting. “Trading ecological impacts
for a special interest group’s fun or profit is inappropriate,
and a dangerous precedent to set,” the biologist wrote in
a memo obtained by the Explorer. That proposal apparently
got shelved.
At the time, the biologist was concerned about spring releases.
He noted that most aquatic insects hatch and reproduce from late
May through June. “Releases during or after this stage would
scour immature stages [of insects] from otherwise desirable habitat,
with no opportunity for recolonization until a year later,”
the memo states. “The productive summer season would be lost
for such species.”
In 1993, DEC’s unit management plan (UMP) for the Blue Mountain
Wild Forest, which includes Lake Abanakee, again raised concerns
about spring rafting, saying the dam releases may “impact
the ecology of the river corridor, affecting shoreline plants, fish
populations and the safety of fishermen [who happen to be standing
in the river when the bubble arrives].”
The UMP also noted that the agency opposed extending the rafting
season into summer on the ground that the fluctuating water levels
in Lake Abanakee “would jeopardize several fish populations
in the lake,” especially spawning bass and sunfish. Because
DEC refused to answer questions for this story, it could not be
learned what prompted the change in policy five years later.
If research were to confirm that dam releases jeopardize the survival
of trout, it probably would not end the debate. Consider the following
points:
• The fishermen are most concerned about brown trout. Yet
this species was introduced to North America from Europe. Should
rafting be curtailed to protect a fish that isn’t native to
the river? (Nash argues that brown trout were naturalized long ago
and are now a prime prize for trout fishermen throughout the East.)
• Nash says the trout are most at risk in the 8-mile-long
Hudson Gorge, where the river is squeezed between rock cliffs, worsening
the effects of scouring and thermal displacement. Yet, rafting guides
say they rarely see fishermen on this stretch of wild river. Should
a business that caters to thousands be restrained for the sake of
a small number of fishermen?
• DEC stocks the Hudson below the gorge as well as the Indian
and is proposing to stock the gorge. Most anglers are satisfied
with stocked trout. Should summer rafting be banned to please the
few who prefer to catch wild trout?
Wayne Failing of Middle Earth Expeditions argues that the rafting
industry has had a positive effect on the environment. For one thing,
he said, guides and their customers pick up litter along the river.
And he said rafting builds support for environmental causes. “Families
come up, they laugh, they play, they have a good time,” he
said, “and they go home and vote for more land acquisitions,
because they now appreciate the wilderness more.”
Failing concedes that the dam releases could have a slight impact
on the ecosystem, but he asks, “If you run over a frog in
the road, should you stop driving automobiles?” Without evidence
of major damage, he said, it makes no sense to crack down on a pastime
enjoyed by many just to please a few.
So far, the region’s environmental groups are siding with
the guides. None of the groups is calling for stopping or restricting
the dam releases. In fact, Peter Bauer of the Residents’ Committee
to Protect the Adirondacks described rafting as “exactly the
type of eco-tourism that we want to see grow in the Park.”
Yet Bauer and spokesmen for the Adirondack Council, Adirondack Mountain
Club and New York Rivers United agree that DEC should study the
matter. “If we get sound information that rafting is harming
the fish habitat, then we’ll have to make some adjustments,”
Bauer said.
Because DEC did not answer questions, it’s unknown whether
the agency intends to do any field research. However, the department
will examine the rafting issues this year as it prepares a unit
management plan for the Hudson Gorge Primitive Area. Clearly, a
lot is riding on DEC’s decision.
“The Hudson has the possibility of becoming a premier fishing
river in the East,” said Victor Sasse, owner of North Country
Sports. “I’m sure summer rafting will be the demise
of it.”
To which Pete Burns of Beaver Brook Outfitters replies: “If
it stops, we’ll be out of business.”
Send your comments to:
Rick Fenton, NYSDEC, Region 5,
P.O. Box 1316, Northville, NY 12134 or phone him at (518) 863-4545.
You also can e-mail suggestions on any tract of state land in
Region 5 (the eastern two-thirds of the Park) to r5ump@gw.dec.state.ny.us.
|
