Schumer, at White Pond

TOWN OF KENT — While standing in a remote area of western Kent, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer Wednesday promised to sponsor legislation calling for $20 million to protect the region’s vital recreational fishing.

Schumer visited White Pond, a fishing area known for its trout and forecast a demise of sport fishing due to the didymo — a damaging invasive algae that grows in thick mats along riverbeds that smother plants along the bottom of freshwater streams depriving trout of their food, habitat and eventually their lives.

Didymo is a Eurasian diatom algae that has caused huge problems in freshwater streams across the Northeast. The Environmental Protection Agency has declared that didymo is increasingly threatening local waterways.

Didymo clings to rock (DEC photo)

“Trout fishing in the Hudson Valley is one of the true pleasures of life in New York State as well as a source for economic growth. We must protect our fish and waterways from invasive species,” said the senator.

Schumer met with New York State DEC officials earlier this week and learned that unless immediate action was taken to prevent the spread of didymo, “it will spread unimpeded across the Hudson Valley.”

Schumer demanded that the Senate Appropriations Committee direct funds for the Fish and Wildlife Service to combat the didymo algae as well as other invasive plant and animal species. He called on Interior-Environment Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Diane Feinstein and Ranking Member Lamar Alexander to “increase funding for the program to $20million. We must and will use this funding to fight aquatic invasive species.”