|
|
Batten Kill Newsletters
Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department Adopts Trout Management Plan for the Batten Kill
A new six-year Batten Kill Trout Management Plan emphasizing habitat restoration and managing wild trout populations without stocking has been released by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. The Batten Kill, a river in southwestern Vermont, is well-known among anglers for its brook trout and brown trout fishing.
After several years of gathering scientific data on the river, biologists with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department wrote a draft plan and circulated it for public comment last June. Public input overwhelmingly supported plan actions for habitat restoration and opposed a draft proposal for stocking trout into the river at this time.
The final management plan, approved by Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Wayne Laroche, was amended and focuses squarely on restoring habitat required by the river’s wild trout populations with the goal of rebuilding the trout fishery. There are no plans to stock trout into the river within the term of the six-year plan, 2007-2012.
“Over the past half dozen years, the department and other agencies have conducted numerous studies to identify likely causes for the reduced abundance of wild brown in the Batten Kill,” said department fisheries biologist, Ken Cox. “Results from these investigations point to habitat deficiencies that have been in the making for many years and more recently reached a critical tipping point.”
While studies of the river’s water quality and temperature regimes indicate conditions suitable for trout, inadequate refuge habitat and other physical changes in the river appear to have reduced the Batten Kill’s capacity to maintain the quantities of wild fish that the river once supported.
Last summer federal and state natural resource agencies, watershed and conservation organizations, and private landowners launched efforts to restore trout cover habitat in the river. This work will continue this summer and in following years.
“Habitat restoration will be directed at making in-stream improvements, reforesting stream banks, reducing erosion, restoring overall river channel and riparian functions, and informing the public of the importance of wise river corridor stewardship to habitat and trout,” said Cox. “In order to be successful, this effort must be long term and involve the combined energies and resources of stakeholders and interest groups.”
During the six-year plan, the lower Batten Kill from the base of Dufresne Pond dam in Manchester downstream to the New York state line will continue under the no-harvest regulation (all trout caught must be immediately released) that has been in effect since 2000. The plan also recommends the department should close two important spawning tributaries, the Green River in Arlington and Sandgate, and the Roaring Branch in Arlington and Sunderland, to the harvest of all trout from October 1-31. Angling in all other waters within the Batten Kill watershed will continue to be regulated under Vermont general fishing regulations. The revised regulations will go into effect on April 14, the opening of the 2007 trout season.
The entire text of Batten Kill Trout Management Plan, 2007-2012 can be viewed and printed at
http://www.vtfishandwildlife.com.
|
|
|
