Welcome to the latest installment of the Wednesday Wake-Up Call, a roundup of the most pressing conservation issues important to anglers. Working with our friends at Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, The Everglades Foundation, Captains for Clean Water, VoteWater.org, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, and Conservation Hawks (among others), we’ll make sure you’ve got the information you need to understand the issues and form solid opinions.
1. Florida is building the world’s largest environmental restoration project
The BBC offers a great primer on Everglades restoration:
Florida is embarking on an ambitious ecological restoration project in the Everglades: building a reservoir large enough to secure the state’s water supply.
In February 2023, a large digger broke ground on a multi-billion dollar project that has been decades in the making: building a reservoir the size of Manhattan Island.
The reservoir, which is part of an historic restoration of the Everglades ecosystem, is intended to help bring a secure, long-term supply of clean drinking water to Florida’s residents.
The Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) reservoir will be located south of Lake Okeechobee, the largest freshwater lake in Florida, and conservationists have dubbed the project “the crown jewel” of the Everglades’ restoration.
“It is the single most important project to store, clean and send water from Lake Okeechobee to nourish the Everglades and supply clean drinking water to millions in South Florida,” Meenakshi Chabba tells BBC Future Planet. Chabba is an ecosystem scientist at the Everglades Foundation, one of the non-profit organisations that advocated for the project.
Click here to read the full story on bbc.com
2. Teens take Montana to court over fossil fuels’ impact on climate change
In the summer of 2023, the 16 plaintiffs, all under the age of 22, won a surprising and significant victory in state court. They argued that Montana’s prioritizing of fossil fuels extraction violated their rights, through fossil fuels’ impact on climate change. Montana has a significant coal industry; but it also has a unique state constitution that enshrines a right to “a clean and healthful environment.”
The constitution allowed the youth plaintiffs and their lawyers to creatively utilize the legal system to fight for what they felt had been frustratingly hard to obtain through traditional advocacy and protests.
On July 10, 2024, the Montana Supreme Court heard the state’s appeal of the 2023 decision. The stakes are high, with the fate of at least one major new project – a gas plant near Billings – tied to the outcome of the youth plantiffs’ case.
As Richard Haass tells us in his book, “The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens,” “Getting Involved” with our democracy can take many forms: from volunteering for a local campaign, to attending a community board meeting, or advocating for a specific cause — as the Montana plaintiffs are doing, in the case of global climate change. The goal is to become a true stakeholder in your community.
Click here for the full story at PBS.org
3. How fly fishing strengthens our connection with wildlife and fosters conservation efforts
A fascinating study by three professors from the UK, Ireland, and the US, looks at “human interactions with wild trout and salmon in the context of fly fishing”:
Whether it’s to reset our mental health or simply to take time out from the hurly-burly of work and urban life, many of us head for oceans and rivers to enjoy their restorative capacities.
Encountering wild animals in these blue spaces contributes to the beneficial effects of being in nature and forms the basis of tourist economies the world over.
Yet, how does our presence affect the creatures that call blue spaces home, and how do encounters with wild species change our relationships with natural environments?