Watershed Restoration: Principles and Practices

Chapter 10: Building Public and Private Partnerships

W. Tilt and C. A. Williams

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569049.ch10

The Beaverkill River, and its sister tributary, the Willowemoc, arise in the Catskill region of New York, a 2-hour drive north of New York City. The Catskills have long been a protected park, due in large part to their role as a municipal water source for New York City. The Beaverkill–Willowemoc is a legendary river system considered by trout aficionados as the ‘‘cradle of American fly-fishing.’’ For more than 150 years, fly-fishing legends from Theodore Gordon to Lee and Joan Wulff have called the Beaverkill–Willowemoc their home or have made annual pilgrimages to these waters.

Five hundred miles south, along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee, arise waters with names like North Chickamauga Creek and Horselick Creek. Although not hallowed among American trout anglers, these watersheds are treasured by today’s conservationists for their aquatic diversity of darters, madtoms, freshwater mussels, and other species.