Maryland - Riparian Forest Buffers and Trout Streams

The Little Gunpowder River is a "use 3 trout stream" flowing along the border between Maryland's Harford and Baltimore counties before reaching the Chesapeake Bay. About 25 miles inland from the bay, a 5-mile stretch of unprotected, pastured shoreline held no trout--at least until the local chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU) mobilized to restore it. "There were trout downstream and trout upstream, but no brookies in that part of the stream," says David Warnock, past president of TU's Maryland Chapter. Warnock gives the credit to TU's Ann McIntosh, "a great person who just happened to be in the right place at the right time." She contacted her extensive network of friends and neighbors, but she passes the credit to Mike Huneke, the area forester for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Forest Service. McIntosh says, "I know a lot of landowners, but Mike Huneke's responsible for most of the restoration; I just get him together with people. We just wanted to work with landowners to cool the stream before it enters the state park." Two who responded, Jim Easter and Jerry Stautberg, have planted extensive riparian forest buffers in hopes of providing enough shade to cool the stream to trout temperature--and to reduce the burden of nutrients and sediment. Warnock says, "When those trees grow up, there will be a great fishery."

Easter had already moved his fences about 100 feet back from the stream when McIntosh and Huneke came calling. In 1993 and 1994, several thousand trees were planted and, despite significant losses to the January 1996 flood, there's "quite a nice group of 20- to 25-foot poplars and oaks," according to Easter. He obviously cares deeply about his farm and its long history; it was divided in 1740 out of a 10,000-acre farm given by Lord Baltimore to his wife. "I liked the land so much I couldn't bear to think about seeing anything happen to it," Easter says, "so I put it in the Maryland Environmental Trust."

Stautberg, too, fenced his off the stream (except for a cattle crossing) and put in thousands of seedlings along a mile of the Little Gunpowder and three quarters of a mile of the tributary Yellow Branch. Stautberg, not himself a troutfisher, looks forward to seeing his mile of the Little Gunpowder shaded and cool right up to where it enters the Sweet Air section of the well-forested Gunpowder State Park.

The Maryland DNR and TU have had help on the Little Gunpowder project from various other agencies, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service. They have provided financial and in-kind assistance such as trees and volunteer help. The landowners themselves have paid for many of the improvements.

Huneke calculates that more than 60 acres of riparian forest have been restored with some 30,000 seedlings along five miles of the Little Gunpowder and its feeder streams. Four miles of fencing is keeping out 350 head of cattle on seven adjacent farms. "When fully established, these riparian forest buffers should lower summer stream temperature by 10 degrees, and filter out some 40,000 pounds of nitrogen and 5,000 pounds of phosphorus a year." Huneke concedes that planting buffers isn't always easy. "We've had some success and we've had some failures, as when muskrats or mice wiped out two-tenths of an acre of seedlings." He also says that the success of the project is largely due to the grassroots partnerships between the public agencies, nonprofit groups such as TU, and the local landowners. As for TU's Maryland Chapter, the Little Gunpowder project is a new departure. "Traditionally," says Jay Boynton, its 1997 President, "we've come in only to protect trout streams in crisis--when they're threatened with road building, development, and the like. But in the last few years, we've focused on getting in with landowners and correcting problems on the watershed, on their land, and on Chesapeake Bay."

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