Father and Son Take a Volunteer Vacation

Today we’re hearing a great story from guest blogger, Larry Miller, the Hatchery Manager at Allegheny National Fish Hatchery in Warren, Pennsylvania.

Volunteer Vacation, or voluntourism, is becoming an attractive way to travel around the globe for those looking to get away, make an impact, take a career break, or investigate a new career path. Voluntourism is a great way to see and become immersed in a new town or country, and offers a unique opportunity to have fun, while giving your trip a sense of purpose. Recently, we welcomed a son and his father a vacation together volunteering at the Allegheny National Fish Hatchery. Not only did the men provide valuable assistance to the hatchery, they got to spend quality time together and fish the Allegheny River.

Craig Gaviglia is a student at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania studying environmental science with an interest in natural resource management. Dave Gaviglia, Craig’s dad, works for an engineering firm as an environmental consultant working on investigating groundwater contamination and its clean-up. Craig wanted to gain some experience in the natural resources field so together we worked out a plan for Craig to volunteer at the hatchery for a week. Craig’s dad, Dave, thought this sounded like a neat idea, so he decided to accompany Craig for a father-son adventure and also volunteer for the week.

Photo by Dace Gaviglia

Craig and Dave spent their week feeding fish, cleaning raceways, and conducting fish inventories of growth and survival. Craig’s most memorable task was adipose fin clipping the bloaters,a native prey fish being restored to Lake Ontario to help restore lake trout and land-locked Atlantic salmon. Fin clipping helps biologists in the Service, State, and Canadian natural resource agencies identify the hatchery-stocked bloaters and evaluate the success of bloater restoration efforts.

Craig told staff “This was a great experience. I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know the staff and I gained a greater appreciation for the fish restoration work occurring at the hatchery.” Indeed, the work seemed right up Craig’s alley. He said “It’s almost like a hobby, not a job,” much like the adage by Mark Twain “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Photo by Larry Miller/ USFWS

Craig Gaviglia holds a Palomino Trout he caught in a tributary to Allegheny River.

As for his favorite part of the experience Dave said “I enjoyed working side by side with my son. I also enjoyed learning about the hatchery and how meticulous the work can be caring for the fish. I would do it again if given the chance.”

It was certainly not all work and no play for Craig and Dave. Both are avid angling enthusiasts and plied the waters of the Allegheny River and its tributaries in the Kinzua Dam area. Craig caught a nice brown trout and a palomino trout in some feeder streams to the Allegheny, and he also caught a nice rainbow trout just downstream of the hatchery on the Allegheny River.

Click here to learn more about the Allegheny National Fish Hatchery.

Hope Floats

Summer is packed with reasons to go outside – fishing, boating, or just taking a walk. On a somewhat cloudy and misty June day, 160 paddlers from 6 states went outside to Float the Fork from Good Hope, West Virginia to West Milford – 6 miles downstream. Indeed, after 9 years of negotiations, plans, and hard work, folks were ready to go outside and celebrate a restored West Fork River!

Float the Fork Town Banner. FWS McMunigal

Paddlers get ready. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Sally Egan, Member Guardians of the West Fork gets launched with a little help. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Removing three dams on the river back in 2016 improved boat access and fish passage along the West Fork. But perhaps more importantly to local residents like Clarksburg Water Board Member Al Cox, the river could become a tourist destination and a place to hold fun community events.

Guardians of the West Fork Watershed hosted the first event on June 2, 2018 – Float the Fork – along with partners including American Rivers, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, West Milford United Methodist Church, the town of West Milford and the Service’s West Virginia Field Office and Appalachian Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office. The Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center, CKB Airport also helped shuttle paddlers to and from the river.

Hope floats on the West Fork River where more than 160 paddlers came out to Float on a misty day in June. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Canoers enjoy the beautiful and restored West Fork River. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Floating the Fork with your best friend too. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Afterwards, everyone enjoyed a picnic with food from local vendors and learned about plans for West Milford Park.

It’s the end of the Float, but not the end of the celebration. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorpsJPG

A river walking trail and park are a couple of the other projects that have been launched by the collaboration hoping to restore the river’s recreational and economic potential.

The West Fork River flows north 103 miles, meandering through the valleys of north-central West Virginia until it joins with the Tygart Valley River to form the Monongahela River (or the Mon’ as the locals would say).

Although the area is dominated by forest and pasture land, coal mining had been a mainstay of the region’s economic livelihood from the 1800s to the 1970s.

In the early 1900s, four small dams were constructed south of Clarksburg, WV  – the West Milford, Two Lick, Highland, and Hartford – for drinking water and irrigation.

The dams blocked the river for more than a century. By the late 1990s, the West Fork River and its 98 tributaries were on West Virginia DEP’s list of impaired rivers. Three of the dams became obsolete after the construction of the Stonewall Jackson Dam in 1996.

After a series of tragic accidents, landowners, county officials, state and federal agencies, and a community watershed group came together to navigate a solution for repairing the broken river.

The West Virginia Field Office and Appalachian FWCO proposed removing the obsolete West Milford, Two Lick and Highland Dams. Problems at the Hartford Dam would be mitigated by installing fish passage modifications. Removing barriers to fish passage  would improve and increase the amount of suitable habitat for fish and other aquatic life, as well as, improve fishing and boating opportunities, promote safety, improve water quality, and reduce flood risks to nearby communities.

Highland Dam, West Fork River, WV. Credit_ N. Millett, FWS

Two Lick Dam, West Fork River, WV. Credit_ N. Millett, FWS

West Milford Dam.Credit_ N. Millett, FWS

The project took years of building trust and planning. Eventually, the collaboration gained community support to move forward with the project – remove the dams, restore the river-banks, and build a trail and park that would connect everyone to the river. A cleanup effort led by the Service and volunteers removed more than 61,000 pounds of trash from the river – including 1,212 tires, several televisions, and even a car.

Miles of river were cleaned, with 61000 pounds of trash removed from the West Fork River, thanks to the coordination and dedication of these volunteers. Credit_ N. Millett, FWS.

Caravan of trash hauled out of the West Fork River, WV. Credit_ N. Millett, FWS

This would mark West Virginia’s most significant river restoration effort and first dam removal project. Since the deconstruction of these century old dams in 2016, fish move freely through 491 miles of streams and tributaries. And the Clarksburg Water Board reports a savings of at least $50,000 dollars a year in water treatment costs.

Damages to the environment can take a lifetime to repair. But removing the ‘kinks in the line,’ allowing rivers and streams to run free, can go a long way towards restoring rivers and the quality of our water. When nature takes its course, sediments are distributed naturally and sustain good fish habitat, nutrients and contaminants break down as they move through the system, and fish return.

More of the beautiful West Fork, WV. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

The West Fork River restoration shows us how hope, integrity and perseverance can be a catalyst for restoration and how it doesn’t always take decades to see results.The actual repair and resulting improvements took only 2 years to realize.

Local resident, Brianna Snyderis all smiles on the West Fork. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

Paddlers had a lot of fun Floating the West Fork. Credit_ Haley Hutchins, AmeriCorps

I don’t live in West Virginia, and may never get to the West Fork, but I feel a lot better knowing another place in our world has been restored. Thanks for giving us hope y’all!

Nonconventional Conservation at the Long Island Field Office

When the fish biologist held out the net for me to scoop up a freshly-caught trout, I tried to act as nonchalant as the other scientists. For them, it seemed, using an electronic backpack to shock and net dozens of fish was just another day in the office. But for me in my second week as a new Outreach Coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it felt like I had just stepped into a sci-fi movie.

Bret Serbin (far right) assisting fish biologists with Electro-fishing

Bret Serbin

I’m a writer, not a scientist. I majored in English and haven’t taken a biology class since high school. But even though I don’t share my colleagues’ scientific expertise, I joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because I do share their commitment to conservation and their love for the outdoors. While humans and their pursuits have not always been the greatest friends of fish and wildlife, I’m excited to find the place of the humanities in the world of environmental conservation. I’m grateful for the opportunity to combine my writing background with my environmental interests as I share the stories of the conservationists and creatures at our Long Island Field Office.

If I seem like an unconventional representative of field biology, the office I’m representing might appear an equally unlikely candidate for environmental conservation. The Long Island Field Office in Shirley, New York is a unique and sometimes overlooked site for biological research.

Few might think of the New York City metropolitan area as a hotspot for wildlife. And the LIFO certainly operates within a smaller space than some of the more prominent areas in New York state or the Northeast region. Yet with only two full-time biologists, the Long Island Field Office is a special and important wildlife locale for the state and the region.

Those who frequent or dream of frequenting New York City’s cultural centers and renowned restaurants might be surprised to know that two of New York’s precious threatened species—the piping plover shorebird and the seabeach amaranth plant—have crucial habitats on Long Island beaches. In fact, the entire Atlantic New York population of the precarious plover is concentrated on Long Island. LIFO biologists work tirelessly to protect these uniquely North American shorebirds, and one glance at these tiny creatures can tell you why.

A fuzzy piping plover chick nearly blends into the sand on a Long Island Beach.

Seabeach Amaranth

Birds and bushes aren’t the only creatures that make the Long Island Field Office special. Because of the 8.5 million New Yorkers that fall within LIFO’s area of responsibility, the biologists there have an unrivaled amount of public interaction. The LIFO also collaborates with some high-profile parties on major projects, like the Army Corps of Engineers and their regular beachfront stabilization efforts. The biologists, the Brooklynites, and the birds all interact in a very careful balancing act at the Long Island Field Office.

During my time here as the Outreach Coordinator for the Long Island Field Office, I hope that more people—both conventional conservationists and seeming outsiders like me—become interested and involved in the important projects and precious creatures at our Long Island Field Office.