Fly Fishers Serving as Transports for Noxious Little Invaders – NYTimes.com

By FELICITY BARRINGER

Blame their boots — or, more precisely, their felt soles. Growing scientific evidence suggests that felt, which helps anglers stay upright on slick rocks, is also a vehicle for noxious microorganisms that hitchhike to new places and disrupt freshwater ecosystems.

That is why Alaska and Vermont recently approved bans on felt-soled boots and Maryland plans to do so soon.

“If you were trying to design a material to transport microscopic material around,” said Jack Williams, an expert on invasive species with the environmental group Trout Unlimited,  “felt on the bottom of someone’s boots in a stream would be as close to perfection as you could find.”

The response among fishermen threatened with the loss of soles that cling to slippery rocks parallels the five stages of grief.

There is denial (the science is wrong), anger (why should I fall on my tail for the good of the planet?), bargaining (I will wash them, I will disinfect them, I will dry them), depression (I cannot afford new boots) and, finally, acceptance (I will go feltless if I must).

John Berry, a fishing guide in Cotter, Ark., switched to studded rubber-soled waders this year, after the streams near his house, by the White River in the Ozark Mountains, became infected with Didymosphenia geminata, or didymo.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Fly Fishers Serving as Transports for Noxious Little Invaders – NYTimes.com.