Science on the Fly Harnesses Fly Fishing Community to Protect Rivers

Fly fishers are full of good ideas. Just ask them. They don’t always amount to anything, but, in the confines of a fly shop or between the gunnels of a drift boat, the ideas pour forth.

But one good idea, launched during a southwest Colorado environmental symposium a few years back, has taken root. And this past summer, it sprouted some important international branches that will hopefully help climate scientists better understand how the world’s existential climate crisis is impacting our rivers.

At the conference in Telluride in 2019, Dr. Max Holmes, president and CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center (WCRC) in Falmouth, Massachusetts, met John Land Le Coq, the founder and CEO of Fishpond, where the two discussed the idea of monitoring rivers over time for their chemical composition, with the intent of determining how climate change affects that composition. But, they discussed, the monitoring needed to be consistent and lasting in order for Holmes and his team at WCRC to glean truly meaningful data.

The conversation then pulled in Allie Cunningham, a shop staffer at Telluride Angler, who had some professional experience in river restoration work. Cunningham was fascinated by the local rivers in the Telluride area and how the rivers—and their fishing—changed over time. Like Holmes and Le Coq, she was curious about the impacts of climate change on the waters she knew and loved.

One good idea led to another, and Cunningham soon found herself serving as the “boots on the ground” in an effort to monitor the rivers in her local watershed.

“It got to where we’d go out once a month and collect water samples and then send them back to the Woodwell Climate Research Center where the water would be analyzed,” Cunningham says. The idea was simple: by examining the chemical composition of the water, a lot of information could be gathered, like potential sources of pollution and organic material (or the absence of it) in the water at certain times of year. It was community science at its simplest level. And, because the monitoring was done from the same points on the river at a regular clip over time, it gave scientists a dependable perspective about the health of the river as a whole.

And Cunningham, an avid angler with a science background herself—she’s worked to monitor water quality below mine tailing sites and has worked on river restoration projects in the past—loved how the water monitoring unlocked the secrets of the San Miguel River, her home water. Cunningham’s appreciation for science, Holmes’s enthusiasm for the project, and Le Coq’s high-altitude vision spurred the trio to think bigger.

Now, four years later, Cunningham is the executive director of Science on the Fly (SOTF), a nonprofit project of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, operates with the mission of monitoring rivers over time with the intent of learning more about how climate change is impacting their waters, temperatures, and their overall quality. The effort has moved beyond the initial effort to monitor rivers around Telluride—as of summer 2023, SOTF is best described as an international organization.

Today, SOTF has 350 monitoring locations spread across 40 states and six countries. It boasts a citizen science team of 150 volunteers. On a regular basis, vials of river water from all over the world arrive in Falmouth for Holmes and his team to analyze.

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Playing the Long Game

Developing a dependable data set for river health takes time. While Science on the Fly monitoring efforts can have short-term or even immediate impacts on the health of rivers across the nation and around the world, the real value will come over time as climatic changes take shape in the form of changing water composition.

But, as anyone working the nonprofit sector will attest, it helps to collect some quick wins—the low-hanging fruit is easier to pluck first. And, in the case of Science on the Fly, one of its earlier efforts at water monitoring alerted scientists to a problem with a creek near Austin, Texas.

“One of our volunteers was monitoring this creek, and the results showed that there was raw sewage in the stream,” Cunningham said. “We were able to alert authorities about a wastewater treatment facility that was out of compliance. Now, thanks to our monitoring, it’s one of the cleanest streams in the state. It took all of three months.”

While it’s the long-term data that SOTF is working to compile, there are clearly uses for the information in the present.

“That’s the kind of thing we can do with the short-term data,” Cunningham says. “We had a volunteer who wanted to monitor their favorite stream and learn more about the entire watershed. And thanks to that, we solved a pretty serious problem.”

But, as Holmes puts it, the long-term chemical data from the rivers SOTF monitors is what is going to reveal how these rivers change over time.

“Think about it from a more human perspective,” Holmes says. “We study river water like a physician might study blood. It helps us form an idea about what’s going on in a watershed. We take a sample from the same place over time and take note of the changes. From there, we can try to determine what’s impacting the health of a river. Just like your doctor might do for you.”

Today, SOTF is working in both urban and remote locations, from the suburbs of Texas’s capital city to the wild rivers of Bristol Bay and the Yukon-Kuskokwim system in Alaska.

“The goal is to keep it going seasonally and over time,” Holmes says. “We can use the data to understand individual rivers and, more broadly, entire watersheds.”

Taking it Global

Good ideas tend to take wing with lighter winds, and it didn’t take much of a breeze to get SOTF off the ground. The organization’s secret sauce is that it appeals to anglers who are interested in what’s going on with the waters they love.

With the help and influence of anglers like Le Coq, the program received philanthropic assistance from others who saw the value in the effort to monitor rivers, both for quick-hit progress in keeping watersheds clean and healthy, and for long-term climate research.

One of the early supporters was the company Patagonia, with a $15,000 funding grant and $30,000 worth of in-kind donations of products like waders and wading boots to help with field studies and sampling.

“People started getting excited,” Holmes says, “and it grew like crazy. In some ways, it was surprising, and some ways not. I mean, the fly-fishing community loves its rivers, and anglers are really into it.”

So the next step was to expand with the help of the travel industry. SOTF, using its contacts in the fly-fishing world, enlisted the help of a fishing lodge in Alaska. Today, the lodge enlists its willing clientele to simply gather water samples from the rivers they fish. This partnership inspired something even bigger.

This past summer, a team from Science on the Fly partnered with Untamed Angling and ventured into the headwaters of the Amazon in remote Bolivia to Tsimane Lodge. Equipped with the monitoring gear and the commitment from the lodge to keep the monitoring going, Science on the Fly is now monitoring the water at the top of the world’s largest river drainage.

But . . . does that make sense? What can we honestly learn from small, headwater river that’s seen hardly any human impact?

“That’s why this is so important,” Le Coq said. “We may learn more from monitoring the waters around the lodge than we learn anywhere else. Impacts to this drainage will tell a very unique climate change story.”

As deforestation and the resulting agricultural development continue lower in the drainage–but approach closer and closer to Tsimane–the rivers in the headwaters can serve as a “control” for what’s to come.

“But what’s really exciting,” Le Coq says, “is the willingness of anglers to get involved, both on their home waters and in places like Bolivia. The latter will require multiple anglers to participate as they visit Tsimane and leave with samples in hand. Then, the monitoring will continue with the next group that shows up at the lodge to chase Bolivia’s fabled golden dorado.

“Our community is pretty dynamic,” Le Coq says. “I’m optimistic that, with the help of anglers, we can learn more about all of our monitored rivers and how climate change is impacting them. And, yes, we can celebrate some immediate victories, but we have to focus on the long term, and how climate change is taking shape.”

After all, he says, the climate crisis doesn’t just affect rivers and fish, it is already impacting fishing.

According to Le Coq, anglers are the perfect citizen scientists. Even with nonprofit entities raising money and arranging for on-the-ground restoration work, it will very likely be anglers who first discover the problems that are bound to arise as the climate crisis continues to mature.

And that research in the Amazon?

“The headwaters of Tsimane are part of a transitional environment between the Amazon forest and the foothills of the Andes—a unique place that should be investigated,” says Marcelo Perez, the CEO and founder of Untamed Angling. The company runs the lodge at Tsimane and has agreed to participate in the climate-focused monitoring.

Perez says his company is working with the Bolivian government on protecting Tsimane, and that monitoring the rivers’ health in the region is part of solving a very complex puzzle.

“I feel encouraged to start a serious investigation in the Tsimane area,” Perez says. “We know just a few things about dorado in the Amazon basin. Beside that, transitional environments usually hold endemic species and interesting information.”

Taking and processing data from larger river basins, like the Amazon, the Yukon, and the incredibly complex network of rivers and streams in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region may not uncover immediate restoration needs. Unlike a city creek in the heart of Texas’ capital city, there very likely won’t be any vital information that leads to a quick-and-dirty effort to fix a sewage plant.

“That’s actually the beauty of monitoring water in those places, and using anglers to do it,” Le Coq says. “Can you imagine a better, more interested community? Can you imagine if a bunch of fly fishers make the greatest strides in the climate crisis when it comes to the health of our rivers?”

Thanks to Science on the Fly, Le Coq certainly can.

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Chris Hunt is an award-winning journalist who writes about fly fishing, travel, conservation, and culture for numerous outlets. He’s been recognized for his work by the Outdoor Writers Association of America, the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists, The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association, and the Idaho Press Club. He lives and works in Idaho Falls, Idaho.