Fishing conservationist Gerald Berrafati is decked out in hip boots and a baseball cap, wading across the Norwalk River. It’s a place that’s changed dramatically in his lifetime.
“Growing up, when I was learning how to fly fish on the Norwalk River, you couldn't walk through this pool, it was over your head deep,” he said.
Today, that same pool of water barely reaches his knees.
That's bad news for trout.
“They're a cold water fish species. They need that water at or below 68-70 degrees throughout the summer and when a river becomes really wide and shallow, the sun can heat it up much faster,” Berrafati said.
The riverbanks have been eroded by flash floods and increased rainfall, brought on by climate change. Without the banks keeping the river in place, the river spreads out, becoming wider and more shallow. The less depth the river has, the quicker it can get scorched by the summer sun.
When the water gets too warm for too long, trout can suffocate and die – a consequence of warm water carrying less dissolved oxygen.
Although rivers are often thought of as cool places to escape the summer heat, rivers actually experience heat waves. In fact, heat waves in rivers last almost twice as long as heat waves in the air, according to research conducted by Penn State University.
In Connecticut, state officials closed parts of the West Branch Farmington River and Farmington River to fishing in 2022 and 2016 due to warm water temperatures.
So how do you keep a river cool? The answer lies in a pile of very old, very bare Christmas trees.
From trimming the tree to rebuilding the riverbank
“We have a lot here, probably not going to get through all of them, but we’ll try to make a dent,” said high school student Theo Dumas, standing in front of a pile of donated evergreens.
He drags one to the river, anchors it into the ground and ties it to another tree nearby.
“It's kind of like a puzzle almost,” Dumas said, “like you're trying to fill in the gaps.”
Over time, the trees will fill in with mud and sediment, eventually becoming new riverbank.
In fact, the ground next to the river, which feels springy and spongy, was created using this exact same process.
“We plant native trees and shrubs on it and you'll have no idea you're standing on old Christmas trees,” Berrafati said.
Berrafati works for Trout Unlimited, a nationwide nonprofit focused on fish conservation and keeping rivers clean. Their chapter in Mianus has been collecting Christmas trees and rebuilding riverbanks for the last 10 years.
So far, they’ve restored about 15 feet of the riverbank along the Norwalk River in Merwin Meadows park in Wilton. The new banks are starting to make the river deeper again and that means more trout sightings.
“We were working on a different site, five minutes away from here, and we were catching probably over two dozen trout in this one little hole in the same river,” Dumas said.
The trees-turned-riverbanks also act as a hiding spot from predators, attracting fish and other animals.
“Whoa, what is that?” Dumas said as the group crowded around a tiny snake, sunning itself on a rock, flicking its tongue out.
“Sometimes when you're installing these [trees], they'll be water snakes kind of living in them,” Berrafati said. “You think you grab the rope to tie it up and it's a snake!”
Berrafati says he’d like to see other places in Connecticut rebuild their riverbanks before the waters get too warm for trout.
“This is something that's super quick and easy, kind of a project in a box. Everybody who's got [a Christmas tree] has got to get rid of it and we'll take it,” Berrafati said.
“There's no shortage of erosion taking place on a lot of our local rivers, unfortunately.”
Áine Pennello is a Report for America corps member, covering the environment and climate change for Connecticut Public
