Eastern Lands Protection Project

TU's Eastern Lands Protection Project works to develop partnerships with land trusts and TU chapters and programs to help protect lands that benefit trout habitat and water quality, and to restore the ecological integrity of streams and watersheds on protected lands. 

A goal of this program is to build greater awareness among anglers and the broader sportsmen and women community about the critical relationship between land protection and healthy native and wild trout habitat.  Increasing the involvement of anglers and other sportsmen in helping to identify lands and to advocate for increased land protection is a natural fit.  Aligning TU chapters and their local land trusts will also lead to greater opportunities for doing important habitat restoration and trout population reconnection work where it makes the most sense - on properties that are permanently protected from incompatible development, industry and energy exploitation.  TU chapters and their famously strong volunteer base can also play an important role in serving as stewards of these local watersheds and in engaging the next generation of conservation-minded members of the community through educational projects in partnership with land trusts and landowners who have preserved their land.  Ultimately, adding the strength of sportsmen and women to land conservation initiatives will result in the protection of important lands and the restoration of critical native and wild trout habitat across the East.

The program has several focus areas:

• Chesapeake Bay Watershed
• Southern Appalachian Mountains
• New England states (on a case by case basis)

In the Chesapeake Bay, TU is actively sharing our Conservation Success Index (CSI) analyses with partners to identify subwatersheds within the Eastern Brook Trout range that are high priorities for brook trout and that are high priorities for land trusts who seeking to meet their various conservation goals.  TU staff have helped partnering land trusts obtain funding for certain land protection projects through CSI analyses, and we have partnered with several land trusts to implement restoration projects on protected lands. 

In Virginia, TU staff collaborated with the Piedmont Environmental Council of Virginia and a conservation-minded landowner whose farm is protected under a permanent conservation easement to remove an old, unused dam on the Thornton River.  TU staff obtained funding through National Fish&Wildlife Foundation's Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grant Program to remove the 4 foot high dam, restore connectivity for diadromous fish from the Chesapeake Bay and resident fish to migrate to the Thornton River's headwaters into Shenandoah National Park and three blue ribbon brook trout fisheries located several miles upstream.  The project also physically rebuilt several pools and riffles and the floodplain to ensure that the river remain stable and provide excellent fish habitat. 

In West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle, TU has forged a partnership with the Cacapon & Lost Rivers Land Trust to work with landowners interested in restoring native brook trout to tributaries of the Cacapon River.  The partnership has yielded three riparian revegetation and livestock exclusion projects on four spring-fed creeks and interest from a number of other members of the community who have protected their farms and woodlands under conservation easement.

In the Southeast, TU recently expanded its field staff to include a Southeastern Land Protection Coordinator and established a field office in Asheville, NC to carry out these activities.  The project has moved forward with great success. Working with land trusts in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, TU's SE Coordinator works to leverage funding and support for land conservation and stream restoration. 

According to the Land Trust Alliance, each year roughly 800,000 acres of the Southeast's forest and farmland is converted to residential and commercial use.  This rapid development is a threat to the region's rich biodiversity as well as the outdoor recreational opportunities afforded by open spaces.  To combat this trend, land trusts have significantly increased their land protection efforts in the Southeast.[1]  Still, the pace of development threatens to outstrip this work.

It is clear that in order to maintain the Southeast's natural heritage, land protection support must be expanded.  TU engages the angling community in order to broaden public support for land conservation and bring to bear the resources of this powerful constituency to achieve greater protection for critical fish and wildlife habitat.