In a nutshell, the Hunting River is a high quality, naturally reproducing brook and brown trout stream with numerous spring ponds and small tributaries feeding it.  Five of the spring ponds, Weix, Blue, Wooduck, Polar, and Willow, have been hydraulically dredged to improve trout habitat.  Over a mile of in-stream trout habitat work has been done on the Hunting River.  The Hunting is also a very important coldwater tributary to the Wolf River and our trout surveys on the Hunting we have shown that large brown trout and a few rainbows even make their way from the Wolf River into the Hunting at certain times of the year.  The Wolf River needs all the coldwater it can get.  For more info on the value of this culvert replacement, please refer to the short summary in the attached MSWord file.

This culvert is a barrier to fish movement, yes, trout included!  The existing culverts are too small and are set much too high.  They impound water for quite a distance upstream resulting in sedimentation upstream of the culverts and warming of the water downstream.  Flows through the culverts are much too high for even powerful swimmers like trout to swim through.  And it is questionable that trout can even leap into the culverts in the first place since they are set too high.  Trout can leap to an extent, but they certainly are not salmon-like in their leaping abilities.