President’s Message – January 2018

How many of you can recite our chapter’s mission statement? I’ll give you a hint (or two)…it’s short and it’s all about conservation.

Our mission is to Conserve, Protect, and Restore Georgia’s cold water fisheries and their watersheds.

As TU national focuses on the country’s cold water fisheries and watersheds, we here in Georgia are focusing on the streams and rivers here in metropolitan Atlanta and throughout the State of Georgia. But what are we doing to back up this statement?

If you’ve been to any of our chapter meetings you’ll hear a good deal about our very active participation in the Georgia Adopt-a-Stream program. Over a dozen chapter members are participating in the program that involves monthly testing at a variety of small streams that serve as tributaries to the Chattahoochee River. As part of this effort, they test for chemical and bacterial water quality.

We also participate in the Sweep the Hooch event every April. In fact UCCTU helped initiate this important clean up event with the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and the National Park Service (Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area) in 2011. Look for sign-up details coming from the CRK very soon.

As a champion of the environment we need to do more. That’s why this year, I’ve asked our Advocacy & Conservation Chairman, Aaron Tyre to look into organizing several stream clean ups and tree planting days on our local rivers and streams. We hope the powers controlling access to our parks will work with us to facilitate these new endeavors.

Conserve – Protect – Restore.

I hope to see you later this month at our January 23 chapter meeting where Jason Ulseth, Riverkeeper of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper will give us his annual update on our favorite river—the Hooch.

Sincerely,

Ken

Ken Mock, President