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The TGF website will soon have a new addition, a page to help TGF members and the public understand their carbon and water footprints. As governments and businesses increasingly focus on slowing global warming and reducing carbon emissions, TGF will initiate an education program to help understand and explain this issue.
The new educational web page will include a calculator to allow users to calculate their own carbon footprints and will have a variety of links and facts that give context to abstract concepts like "100 tons of carbon." Through this education initiative TGF hopes to make the fly fishing community aware of how household activities like doing laundry or even driving the kids to school release carbon to the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. And of course, when you drive or fly off to go trout fishing you are also generating a measurable carbon footprint.
Water shortages as a result of a warming climate will have significant consequences to the fisheries our organization protects. More and more riverbeds are running low or going dry in the hottest summer months. In the last 50 years, human activities - mainly the burning of fossil fuels and the depletion of forests - have caused a large increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and resulted in a warmer climate. For example, snowfall in New England has decreased by almost 15% over the last 50 years.
In addition to the web page, TGF is exploring the feasibility of planting native trees in and around the rivers and streams in the Catskills to help reduce carbon emissions. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into woods, leaves, and roots. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, forests in the United States have sequestered about 200 million tons of atmospheric carbon per year, offsetting about 10% of the carbon dioxide emitted by Americans burning fossil fuels. Trees also stabilize banks and provide shade to help keep the waters cooler for trout in the summer. Research by TGF’s Conservation Committee has found that long-lived trees like oaks, maples, and dogwoods sequester the most carbon and many of these species are available in 5-gallon containers at area nurseries to facilitate streamside planting.
There are many examples of "carbon offsets" available for purchase, but most go to support a project that the buyer will never see. But by planting a tree in a local Catskill watershed, our members could eat their lunch under a flowering dogwood and be satisfied that they have helped reduce the impact of global warming.
Further information about carbon footprints and actions we can take to reduce our personal footprints as well as improve trout habitat will be on the TGF website soon.
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