Why Monitor Our Streams? Because Knowledge Is Power!

The Cove Point Natural Heritage Trust owns the Hellen Creek Forest & Wildlife Preserve, located on both sides of the upper tidal section of the Hellen Creek watershed that includes upstream past the head-of-tide. These upper reaches of Hellen Creek, above the Mill Bridge Road crossing, include an open area where the stream winds back into the forest. Wood ducks and beavers are part of the wildlife here, and the setting along this expansive watershed area is idyllic.

But how healthy are our streams leading into the creek? Why does it run coffee brown after a downpour? Are invasive aquatic species a problem? Have Northern Snakeheads and Blue Catfish found our creek? What about the invasive phragmites? There were non-native Mute Swans here as recently as 2020. Are they gone for good?

It only makes sense that the Trust should want to know more about the watershed it occupies and wants to protect. A new Five-Year Strategic Plan references this concept, and a new, energized Board of Trustees is providing the impetus to support quarterly water testing to document and track changes in the ecological health of the streams that drain into the creek. We must monitor regularly and consistently over the long run to know if our streams are getting better, worse, or staying about the same. If the Trust doesn’t monitor (plus lab test, survey, study, and observe), there is but one conclusion to be drawn: “We don’t really know what’s going on.”

The best the Trust can and will do is establish a current baseline, keep monitoring, and document future changes. Monitoring should never be a “Do it once and walk away” effort. Additional years of water monitoring will build a database that will eventually, within 10 years or so, transform into a time series. Achieving that important but challenging goal is necessary to give us the knowledge needed to determine if our streams are improving or degrading, or unchanged, compared to the 2024-2025 baseline.

Beyond the basic water chemistry monitoring the Trust waded into this year, we are also considering the addition of a biological component to our monitoring program. Collecting and identifying benthic macroinvertebrates and fish offer an opportunity to ask the critters that live in our streams if their ‘homes’ are healthy or not. We’d also like to know if there are any rare, threatened, endangered, and invasive aquatic animals living in Preserve streams. As the title of this article says, “Knowledge is power”, and the more knowledge we have, the better.

If you would like to receive more information on our specific testing parameters and monitoring results, please write to us!

Written by: Ron Klauda and Bob Boxwell