Today is a bad day for fish - Good Friday. Next week, it's going to get even worse. Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham will release a symbolic trout into Jordan Creek in the Trexler Nature Preserve, as part of the first opening of the Creek to anglers in 74 years. Three hundred yards along the Creek will be reserved for fishing by children and the disabled. Trexler Nature Preserve is an 1108-acre public park in Lehigh County.WHO: Don Cunningham, Lehigh County Executive; Lee Creyer, Waterways Conservation Officer, PA Fish and Boat Commission; Tom Gettings, Director of Special Projects, Wildlands Conservancy
WHAT: Trout stocking of Jordan Creek in the Trexler Nature Preserve
WHEN: Thursday, March 27, at 1:30 PM
WHERE: Trexler Nature Preserve
Schnecksville, PA
DIRECTIONS: From I-78 and Route 22 traveling west
Take route 309 north for approximately 5.7 miles. In the village of Schnecksville, make a left turn onto Game Preserve Road. Follow this for approximately 2.2 Miles to the entrance gate. Turn left into the Central Range of the Trexler Nature Preserve and go 1.3 miles to the ford of the Jordan Creek and the trailhead of both the Covered Bridge Trail and the Elk Watching Trail. To reach the North Range of the Trexler Nature Preserve, drive past the entrance gate to the Central range, and continue 0.2 miles to Mill Creek Rd. Turn right and go 1.1 miles to the entrance of the North Range on the right. Continue 0.2 miles to the parking area.
12 comments:
So the preserve isn't preserving any fish... they're more like pre-serving the fish to the "anglers."
The hell with those damn fish. I'm pretty sure I'm at least mentally disabled so I'll be there with a few grenades.
Burnie - just keep your clothes on.
Pre-serving the fish. That was funny.
I'll be interested to hear what Gloria Hamm has to say about this. She lives in N. Whitehall near the preserve.
general trexler would be rolling in his grave. the preserve was meant as a reserve for bison. one could drive through and perhaps see a herd, or not. it was not intended as a zoo, it was not intended for fishing, and it was not meant for "passive recreation". unfortunately, the frame of reference for his intentions is long gone, the board of trustee's has become a political entity and the gifts of his greatness are slowly disappearing. i.e., There was a magnificent tropical greenhouse in trexler park.
Please give this bastard Cunningham
a heart.
There's a joke going around that he wants to be governor.
Can't we get anybody with some basic
human kindness to run for this office?
The destruction of the Trexler Game Preserve continues by Don Cunningham, WildLANDS Conservancy (Gettings), and the Trexler Trust. General Trexler's vision of his gift to Lehigh County was an animal preserve that the people could take a trip through and learn a little about nature by seeing wildlife in their proper setting.
It is sufficient to read WildLANDS Jordan Creek Watershed Management Plans of 2000 to see why fishing need and should not be instituted along the Trexler Preserve section of the Jordan Creek. The study notes:
1) "Restoring riparian buffers along the Jordan Creek and protecting thiose that are currently intact is critical to conserving watershed resources and improving water quality and habitat."
2) "The Game Preserve . . . provides a significant zone of protection to the middle reaches of the Jordan Creek watershed."
3) "Half-mile to mile reaches of the Jordan that flow through the [Game Preserve} are also lacking significant riparian vegetation."
4) Recommendation: "Use Public Lands to Demonstrate Proper Riparian Buffer Management."
5) "The Forest Service Standarad for Buffer Zones is Presently Set at 15 Feet."
6) There are currently 3 parks in Lehigh County permitting fishing "bordering the Jordan [a signficant amount of footage] that are in need of Environmental Improvements/Restoration:
Covered Bridge Park in South Whitehall
Jordan Park in Allentown
Jordan Creek Parkway in Whitehall"
7) The gray shale and thin beds of siltstone and sandstone are delicate and vulnerable to breaking down and producing sedimentation into the creek. With sedimentation and the underlying bedrock, the Jordan tends to run dry during late summer months.
Bet you if you called WildLANDS on their 2000 conclusions and recommendations now, they would say fishing in the Jordan on the Game Preserve fine - to keep their land grab of running the preserve into a "Botanical garden."
Don just wants to be governor and thinks this looks good to the people who like to hurt fish. A commissioner once told me We can do anything we want to the preserve as long as we present it "properly" to the people; they don't care. So maybe she was right and you can just destroy a traditional gem of Lehigh County, that gift from General Trexler for all the people, to assure the votes of a small segment of the people. The $1.9 million deal with the Trexler Trust was to "open" the preserve. Opening it would have been providing relatively short walking paths so all the people could take a trip through and see wildlife in their proper setting - not 10-mile hiking, mountain biking, killing deer and wild turkey with arrows, and putting trout in the Jordan so people can kill them hurtfully for fun and degrade the vulnerable banks of the Jordan - an expensive governor candidacy for Lehigh County, and if successful, probably governship of the state.
They've changed the name from the Trexler Game Preserve to the Trexler Nature Preserve; guess "Trexler" will go next and we'll have the Cunningham/Gettings Nature Preserve - where hurting any animals or fish there is what's considered natural.
General Trexler never fished there. It was an animal sanctuary until Cunningham shattered it with arrows in deer and wild turkey behind the Game Preserve fence.
And it's the old Fish Commission Game: you can only have fishing there if you "release" trout to be caught, and catch them fast before they get downstream.
And of course the joy of inflicting pain on fish (see studies by M. K. Stoskopf, College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina, and Prof. F. K. Hurd, biologist at Melbourne University) for fun eludes.
Hate to hurt those fish...then again I understand they piss in our drinking water! Loomis....Loomis....Loomis
Don gets an unfair bad rap with the animal rights crowd. The guyo out in Allegheny County has employed White Tail Management and plans on killing deer by the truckload. I'm not sure whether he'll do that before or after he kills the geese in his parks -- look on Youtube for that one.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08076/865234-140.stm
The only good thing about comments, even when anonymous personal attacks are not deleted, is that they identify the commenter more than the attacked:
The implication it is fine to hurt living creatures - fish - because they "piss in our drinking water": Um does anyone notice all those pristine streams we are trying to get back to had fish in them? Loomis . . . Loomis . . . Loomis
And Don Cunningham is taking an "unfair bad rap" because it is claim the other "SS guard" is worse?
We cannot eschew logic - and documented information - to support our hates and likes. All of the people are smarter than that
Even the greenest among us can see the benefit to HUMAN children and differently-abled in opening 300 yards of the Jordan Creek for their fishing. The Game Preserve land offers a valuable outdoor recreational opportunity to the PEOPLE of the county in a time when driving to Carbon, Monroe,
or Bucks County is becoming an economic hardship, while adding more poison to the air.
It's terrific to see our leaders concerned about our quality of life, and committing resources to good clean fun. I can't wait to use that land to bird, hike and get a good workout. As Henry David Thoreau said, "First, be a good animal."
Even the most HUMAN among us must notice that opening the Game Preserve to outdoor recreation does not necessitate the hurting or killing of other living creatures. The implication that we are HUMAN gives us the right to kill things for fun ignores humanity.
That children should be taught to kill or hurt for fun may not be what any mother wishes to achieve, and one might even think that the disabled would be more aware of and opposed to the inflication of unnecessary pain on living creatures thrown into the water so they can hurt them.
Good old Henry David: "First, be a good animal." We must all try.
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