Dan Chapman
Appalachian trout in trouble as temps rise, storms rage
Climate change could steal your fish
Dan Chapman is a public affairs specialist for the Southeast Region of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
CHEROKEE — The mountains of the Southern Appalachians were scraped clean a century ago. Headwater ecology changed as the canopy of trees disappeared that was shading the streams from all but the noonday sun. Rainstorms pushed dirt and rocks into the water muddying the feeding and breeding grounds of fish, amphibians and insects.
Lower down the mountain, newly cut pastures edged right up to the creeks while cows mucked up the once-pristine waters. Invasive bugs killed hemlocks, ash and other shade-giving trees. Pipes, culverts and dams blockaded streams and kept animals from cooler water.
The trout never had a chance.
Now they face an even more insidious foe — climate change.
- doug reed
- chattahoochee national forest
- trout season
- trout unlimited
- nc institute for climate science
- mike lavoie
- wild brook trout
- fly fishing team
- oconaluftee river
- raven fork
- ela dam
- toccoa river
- trout fishing in the southern appalachians
- dan chapman
- eastern band of cherokee indians
- eastern brook trout
- trout fishing
- qualla boundary
- brown trout
- rainbow trout
- north carolina state university
- chattahoochee river
- rough branch
- dissolved oxygen
- climate change
- headwater
- fish biodiversity
- fish stock
- fishing
- fish hatchery
- drought
- hemlock woolly adelgid
- sedimentation
- coldwater fishery
- fish disease
The South’s hidden climate threat
It’s not just the coastlines that are recording climate change. Even the mountains of North Carolina are feeling the heat — including some endangered plants
“Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman retraced John Muir’s 1867 trek through the South, including the naturalist’s troubling legacy, to reveal environmental damage and loss that’s been largely overlooked.” This is an excerpt published by The Revelator from his book, A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir’s Journey Through an Endangered Land.
BOONE — It’s a wonder anything survives the ice, snow, and winds that pummel the ridge, let alone the delicate-seeming yellow flowers known as spreading avens.
The lovely, long-stemmed perennials are exceedingly rare, officially listed as endangered, and found only in the intemperate highlands of North Carolina and Tennessee. They sprout from shallow acidic soils underlying craggy rock faces and grassy heath balds. At times blasted with full sun, but mostly shrouded in mist, the avens are survivors, Ice Age throwbacks that refuse to die. Geum radiatum is only known to exist in fourteen places, including hard-to-find alpine redoubts reached via deer trail or brambly bushwhacking.