November 20, 2024
Dear Friend of American Climate Partners,
In 1731, the Pennsylvania General Assembly received a petition from Lancaster County, Pa. residents. Conestoga Creek had been dammed by miller Stephen Atkinson for his textile mill operation. The petition complained that the great quantities of fish once available upstream were stuck below the dam. Atkinson offered to leave a 20-foot-wide passage to allow fish to pass upstream. Before the Assembly took action, locals destroyed the dam.
Violent outbursts over shad were common every spring from the mid-1700s through the Civil War. Weapons ranged from rocks to rifles to cannons –locally referred to as the shad wars. Fishermen would fight – for best fishing places, and to halt mill dams restricting good fishing. In 1761, the Assembly passed laws for the preservation of fish, particularly shad, in the Susquehanna. It called for weirs, racks, baskets, pounds, and similar devices erected in the river to be destroyed and prohibited building in future years (https://susqnha.org/discover-river-history/riverroots/).
Today, many feel the moral fabric of our communities is unwinding, from family, to community, to nation. Many are hungry for a sense of pride and connection. We know this may sound unorthodox, but we believe climate restoration could be viewed as an epic story that needs all Americans to come together in solidarity around a redemptive path, built on clean air, water, and thriving fisheries. Unfortunately, much of climate action today is rooted in what some have come to see as elitist messaging, perhaps one of many drivers of the discontent and grievance so pregnant now in our culture.
Our organization is charting a different course. Each of our programs first tells a story about a new kind of climate patriotism always connected through our entrepreneurial DNA to the dignity of work, and second about sound biochemical science.
For example, in 2020 we launched a new program, called Rapidan Institute, based on the premise that Chesapeake Bay water quality will never be restored, no matter how many billions of dollars are thrown at it, without first restoring Chesapeake Bay wildlife. Why do we need wildlife? Because animals control infinitely larger levers across the landscape to reduce rural land nutrient loss – than do humans. And if we need the help of wildlife, we need to enable them to thrive. And letting river animals thrive and roam throughout their habitat is the key to not only solving the Bay problem but as importantly unlocking two thirds of the 2 down, 1 up climate restoration solution. 2 down, 1 up is the shorthand we use to describe the climate restoration goal – moving carbon and water from the air to the ground, and moving nitrogen from the ground to the air
The story goes like this. River mussels clean the water. Mussels need fish like American Shad to reproduce (they attach to gills). Since 1774, Rapidan Mill Dam has blocked an estimated 1000 miles of spawning grounds and eliminated roughly 1 mile of wetlands behind the dam (one of the largest such blockages in the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed). The dammed river no longer moves nitrogen from the ground to the sky in wetlands and floodplains. Shad disappeared behind the dam. Likewise with the mussels that depend upon them. Shad numbers plummeted in the ocean. Rockfish declined. Disappearing fish mean their bodies no longer move carbon from the sky to ground.
My point is this. Back in the day – these fish really mattered to everyone. And today, now, through the Rapidan Institute’s Rapidan Fish Passage Project, the Rapidan community, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the United States of America have an opportunity to recreate a new kind of patriotism, that is connected to our mutual dependence, and I argue mutual obligation to each other, and to these animals, in the pursuit of care for their well being. In the doing of the restoration of American Shad, our founding fish (The Founding Fish, John McPhee, 2003) and the restoration of our common life giving climate ties that bind us, we can create a new story of national pride and solidarity we so crave in these tumultuous times.