Engaging a community of interest in water quality protection: Anglers monitoring wadeable streams

Excerpt

Citizen-based stream monitoring programs have been conducted for decades by local citizens concerned about pollution of their local streams and rivers. In recent years, public participation has increased dramatically as state and federal agencies have developed protocols for citizen science monitoring of stream condition and water quality (Nerbonne and Vondracek 2003; Newman et al. 2012). Furthering the trend has been the dramatic increase in Internet access, web mapping capabilities that facilitate data storage and display, and technological improvements in monitoring equipment (Newman et al. 2012). These developments have broadened the scope of what is feasible to monitor, while bringing down the cost of many monitoring efforts.

Anglers have a long history of participation in citizen science initiatives aimed at monitoring streams and improving fisheries. In the United States, angler-based interest in water quality dates from at least 1926 when the Izaak Walton League of America launched water quality monitoring efforts in the eastern United States, which would spin off local programs like Maryland's Save Our Streams (Firehock and West 1995). In Oregon, anglers have collected scale samples from steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) as part of an age study (Clemens 2015) and teamed up with agencies and insect conservation societies to monitor…