The President's Angle

by Bob Luck
If you’d like to skip the President’s Angle and scroll right down to the Cat Fly, let me cut to the chase.  Please attend one or more of the following habitat events scheduled between tomorrow and June 1st:
May 16 and May 19:  Tree planting on Cedar Valley Creek in Southeast Minnesota.  You may remember Jen Biederman talking about this stream during her habitat presentation earlier this year.  A very special place! https://mntu.org/event/plant-trees-with-minnesota-trout-unlimited/
May 21:  Brush removal on Little Pickwick Creek near Winona.  Another beautiful Driftless area stream, where our friends at the WinCres chapter are doing a great job and could use some help. https://mntu.org/event/win-cres-volunteer-workday-little-pickwick-creek-2/
June 1:  Invasive species removal and trash pickup on TCTU’s home stream, the Vermillion.  A bit closer to drive!
We recently submitted our annual activity report to TU National, and here is the bottom line:  in our last fiscal year, over 100 TCTU members donated over 2000 hours of their time.

That is a lot of hours!  It is also an underestimate, because it only captures registrations from our Events Center and board member self-reporting.  And it doesn't include the 500 or so hours that 100+ volunteers spent on Eagle Creek this April.  That will go into the pie chart next year! Whatever the total number of hours was, the results are clear. We have better habitat on Eagle Creek, the Vermillion system, and Hay Creek.  We better understand the temperatures, chemistry and erosion issues of the 100+ miles of trout water in the 7-county metro area.  We have important legislation working its way through the Minnesota legislature.  And we have more kids than ever who are learning about trout and their environments.  Thank you, volunteers!
This year we are going to continue to work on the accuracy of our reporting, and on providing more recognition to our volunteers.  And…we hope to have even more volunteers doing even more work.  I started this essay by highlighting four habitat improvement opportunities coming up in the next two weeks.  We are going to have a lot more after that.
Habitat improvement may be what TU is best known for, and we have a surprisingly large amount of water close to the Twin Cities to work on.  But our biggest resource is kids.  We have something like a million kids age 0 to 18 in the Twin Cities area, and we have great education programs.  In the next two weeks, we have six trout releases coming up, plus our next “Meet-a-Stream” event at Whitewater State Park.  We need Education volunteers!  Volunteering with kids now requires a background check; if you would like to work with kids this summer, and have not submitted a background check application, please email Evan Griggs and he will get you started. 
Advocacy is the most difficult of our activities to track, but it is super important to get sensible policies in place to protect our waters.  Right now, we are watching with concern as an application for groundwater drilling in the headwaters of the Vermillion is in the final process of being approved by the DNR.  Please reach out to Chris O’Brien if you’d like to help with advocating for clean water and watershed protection.
I am looking forward to some great fishing in 2024, and to working with you to protect our waters and their inhabitants for future generations.