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Regular readers of our newsletter may recall that TCTU has adopted Neonic-treated seeds as its key advocacy issue for 2026. To learn more about these dangerous insecticides, and what we plan to do about them, please read the document below. If you would like to join our efforts, please click here to fill out a brief survey.
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Thanks to all those who attended our chapter gathering last night. Special thanks to our guest speakers including Randy Arnold, Kevin Wier, Zander Cummins and Kasey Yallaly. If you want to get to work with Randy on Habitat Projects in Wisconsin, email him: [email protected] If you want to get involved with Foster the Outdoors, email them: [email protected] If you want to attend Neonics Lobby Day at the Capitol, you can find details and registration here You can find a pdf version of the presentations below. If you'd like to watch a video of Kasey's presentation, you can find it on our YouTube channel here. Don't forget to like and subscribe. See you next month! by Yves Charron
Good day fellow TCTU members, Finally got some warm weather so we can all head outside and do some fishing. I had the chance to fish with some TCTU friends. Hope you were able to get out too and enjoy this warmer weather. Here is a 1-page primer on Neonics for hunters and anglers, prepared by the TCTU Neonics Advocacy Team by Jim Sauter If you are like me, you enjoy watching the birds almost as much as catching trout when wading our streams. According to Andrew Halberg in his "Stop the Thud" bird study at the U of M, one of the most susceptible birds for colliding into windows can often be seen by many of our streams- the Warbler. We should start seeing them reappear in Minnesota in April and May. Quote of the Month: "Approximately 365 million to over 1 billion birds are killed by colliding with windows in the United States every year... The total decrease in bird populations over the last 50 years is about 2.9 billion birds." His study also looks at ways to help mitigate this issue. Andrew Halberg, Ph.D. Candidate, U of M. Stop the Thud Study For more information about Andrew's study, click here. Our days are getting longer, and we seem to have passed the coldest days of the year. I have not yet ventured to any streams yet, but I'm hoping to get out there in the coming weeks as our air temperatures start hitting the 40 and even 50 degree mark. Catch and release season is open for trout in many Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa streams. This is also the time of year when we begin gearing up for the upcoming TCTU Streamkeeper season. STREAM MONITORING IN 2026 As we begin the 2026 stream monitoring season, this is a good opportunity for you to get involved. We have two categories of stream monitors. 1. Targeted Streamkeepers- TCTU has stream monitoring teams that are taking chemical tests on nine streams around the metro area. The TCTU streams include Belle Creek, Brown's Creek, Eagle Creek, Hay Creek, Ike's/ MOA Creek, Little Cannon River, South Branch Vermillion, South Branch Whitewater River, and Trout Brook. Our targeted teams for 2026 are complete. 2. General Streamkeepers. These are members that are randomly monitoring streams during the season at times and locations of their choosing. We invite and encourage any TCTU member to join our general streamkeeper group. The chemical monitoring season begins in April and concludes at the end of October. If you have an interest in becoming a General Streamkeeper in the upcoming season, please contact me at: [email protected] We plan on conducting on-stream training in April. Be sure to check the events page on our website in the coming month to sign up. More information will also be in the March newsletter. TCTU STREAMKEEPER TRAINING We will do on-stream water quality chemical training for new Streamkeepers, current Streamkeepers that need some refresher training, and anyone that has interest in learning more about taking chemical water tests. We will follow the Izaak Walton League Save Our Stream (i.e. SOS) protocol and learn about taking measurements including water temperature, clarity, nitrates, nitrites, pH, alkalinity, hardness, phosphate, and salt. We will also discuss the updated Google Form that we will use to record the data. Date: Saturday, April 18, 2026 Time: 10:00 am Location: TBD. An event link with the location will be available soon. If you want to see some of our monitoring results from prior years, you can create an account and log into the Clean Water Hub at: https://www.cleanwaterhub.org/account/login 1. Log in with email address and password 2. Scroll down and click “Search Sites” and enter TCTU 3. Scroll down and click “My Organizations" 4. Select either “Non Target Waters TCTU” or “TCTU-Target Streams” 5. Please note that we have two pages of streams for Targeted Streams 6. Click SOS Chemical to find our data from prior years. We also have the biological test results that we gathered at Eagle Creek and the Whitewater River on the Clean Water Hub. SALT WATCH, JANUARY 2026 Special thank you to Abby Hileman from the Izaak Walton League of America for her contributions as we recently completed the Salt Watch at the end of January. Results and a more detailed report from our partner organization, the Izaak Walton League, will be forthcoming in future newsletters. Source: Abby Hileman, Salt Watch Coordinator, Izaak Walton League of America "Did you know that one teaspoon of salt has the potential to permanently pollute five gallons of water? Once salt enters the environment, there is no feasible way to remove it. As it does not break down, salt continually builds up in our soils, groundwater, and surface waterways. Most water utilities also do not have the funding or infrastructure to remove salt from drinking water. Readings like Harold Swalik's (i.e., see results below) at the Mall of America stream are over the chloride threshold (230mg/L) of what the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers to be chronically toxic to freshwater aquatic life. These concentrations are expected to rise as increasing temperatures cause snowmelt and rainfall to wash even more salt into our streams, putting further strain on aquatic life. Monitoring our waterways and sharing results are both crucial steps to starting the conversation about smart salting practices, as we can always do better when it comes to balancing the scale on environmental protection and public safety." Thank you to all our Streamkeepers for your great work in helping to monitor our streams! SALT/ CHLORIDE READING 2026 OBSERVER: Harold Slawik OBSERVER NOTES: The habitat work from last summer on MOA Creek is progressing well. LOCATION: MOA/ IKE'S CREEK DATE: February 6, 2026 Chloride Reading: 283 mg/l, Better than usual but still very high Water temperature was 46.2 degrees C Chloride (Cl), mg/L readings
Streamkeeper Harold Slawik did an AI query about our chloride testing, and this is what he discovered: "I am using a Quantab brand chloride test strip kit provided by the Izaak Walton League of America to measure the chloride levels in a local stream. What chloride compounds will the test strip detect in addition to sodium chloride (salt)? AI Response: Great question — and the chemistry behind the Quantab strip is key to answering it. The strips work by reacting with chloride ions (Cl⁻) in solution. The strip is impregnated with silver dichromate (Ag₂Cr₂O₇). When dipped in water, chloride ions react with silver ions from the silver dichromate to precipitate insoluble silver chloride, turning the strip from brown to white. The length of the white region indicates chloride concentration. The critical point is that the strip detects the chloride ion itself, not any specific chloride compound. This means it will respond to the dissolved Cl⁻ ions released by any soluble chloride salt in the water, regardless of what cation (positive ion) is paired with it. Common chloride sources in streams that would be detected include:
That's all for now. Tight lines. Jim Sauter TCTU Streamkeeper Coordinator PHOTOS MOA/ IKE'S CREEK HABITAT WORK, May 12, 2025 Relocating Brook Trout During Habitat Work Photos by Jim Sauter by Bob Luck
Regular readers of this column may be aware that I am a snowbird, spending a couple of months each year in Asia where the weather is warmer and the food is better, unless you are a fan of green Jello hot dish garnished with tater tots. This year I thought I was pretty smart, getting out of town just ahead of a polar vortex that sent temperatures way below freezing and caused shelf ice to form on spring fed creeks. It didn’t last long; I understand that temps have been climbing into the 40s and even the 50s. I now get taunted just about every day by friends who are letting me know how much fun they are having on area streams while I am sweating in the tropics. There is no way I can hold a grudge against friends enjoying a day on the stream, but a 50-degree day in February is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one: more evidence of a changing climate that promises to bring more hot weather, more droughts and more intense summer rain events to put stress on our streams. I have heard often that “these are the good old days” in the Driftless Area. Due to less intensive farming, better agricultural practices and legislation such as stream buffer laws, fish populations have never been higher, and the fishing has never been better since European settlers first showed up with their wheat seeds and steel plows. That has been my experience, too. I catch more fish now than I did growing up in Madison the 1970s, or when I first moved to the Twin Cities in the late ‘80s, and when I look at the DNR maps of trout streams, there are more blue and green highlighted streams than there were twenty or thirty years ago. |
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February 2026
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