[NatureNS] Habitat degradation

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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 19:04:00 -0300
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Dear All

A self explanatory lament is pasted below.

The Woodman Hollow (Sharp Brook) Story or "The road to hell is paved 
with good intentions"
     In about 1946 my oldest brother Bud had a car and took me and 
brother Irwin to what we called Woodman Hollow (the upper reaches of 
Sharp Brook) to fish. The public highway between Prospect and Lloyds 
went downhill, at roughly a right angle to the ravine and up the other 
side. The narrow bridge was about 6' above the brook.
     So we each cut an Alder pole, wound a few feet of green cotton line 
on the far end, tied a hook on and baited it with an angleworm. Access 
to the brook was easy. I was about 11 then, had not fished previously 
and was thrilled. Within 10 minutes and 20' from the bridge we each had 
a good string of trout and called it a day. One did not need a fishing 
license then so we felt no need to return and get our money's worth and 
I was next there about 1960.
     By 1960 the bridge was a bit higher but access to the brook was 
very easy via an old sled road which left the highway just east of the 
bridge. The first few hundred yards were fished out but there was good 
fishing at many points up to an old dam across the brook and adjacent 
unmortared rock structure, on the east side of the brook, which clearly 
had once supported one  beam of a mill powered by water; perhaps 
Woodman's Mill.
     By then, a bit North of the bridge there was a flow gauge for 
measuring stream flow and stairs so this gauge could be readily tended 
at intervals from the east.
     By about 1967, when I got back from Graduate School, I fished there 
fairly often and sometimes my wife, wlth daughter in a baby carriage, 
came to enjoy an evening by the brook while I fished upstream. She could 
readily wheel the baby carriage from the highway along the sled road to 
find some place of interest with fewest biting insects. Over the next 30 
years I likely fished there at least once a year and noticed no change 
in Woodman Hollow fishing.
     By about 2005, when I visited the brook to take photos of the 
unmortared rock support for the mill, there had been some dramatic 
changes for the worst. By then the road over bridge was wider and at 
least 20' above the brook. The new deep raw earth ditch, which ran 
downhill from the east along the south side of the road ending in a deep 
wide gully  had carried a huge volume of water to the brook along with 
at least 3,000 cubic feet of soil/silt.  And silt is added every time it 
rains. How long will it take for any of this brook downstream to recover 
?  Getting from the highway to the brook was a problem; impossible east 
of the brook due to a very wide and deep gully , difficult well west of 
the brook.
     Walking up the brook, to get my photo of the mill support, was like 
attending the funeral of an old friend; alone. The former winding 
stream, with a succession of pools, had been replaced by a ravine-wide 
maze of criscrossing dry channels with isolated stagnant pools here and 
there and much exposed soil. The dam at the old mill site was gone and 
the unmortared support on the east was also missing.  I do not know this 
for a fact but a Google Earth of the area upstream  of the mill site, 
appeared to be a huge clearing; likely a clear cut.
     Unfortunately other brooks running north from the north mountain to 
the Bay of Fundy have also died of siltation from careless disposal of 
water from unvegetated highway ditches. So we throw the book at anyone 
who is criminal enough to try to catch planted trout without a license, 
and sometimes use choppers to contain this crime,  but pay  government 
employees to destroy streams using earth moving equipment.
     This is a variation of an old theme-- "We hang the man and flog the 
woman, who steals the Goose from off the Common. But let the greater 
criminal loose who steals the Common from the Goose."
D. H. Webster, Jan. 2020, revised June 2020

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