Planting willows for stream bank stability

HANKINS, NY — As it flows under Route 97, Hankins Creek is not the challenging trout stream anglers seek this time of year in the Catskills, but the narrow, shaded creek plays a crucial role in supporting the growth of local rainbow and brown trout populations.

For this reason Clem Fullerton of the Upper Delaware Chapter of Trout Unlimited was planting natural sandbar willows—a native tree that reproduces—last week along the bank of the creek, which he said is a “great nursery stream.”

Trout “spawn and stay here for two years, until they get to the Delaware and say, ‘Hey, this is the place’,” Fullerton said. He pointed across the creek to a band of mature sandbar willows, whose thick roots stabilize the bank when the creek floods, thus preserving the habitat for young trout.

Fullerton had been laboring at the spot the previous day, digging with a shovel and crow bar to move hefty rocks and create a hole big enough for the young trees. “If you don’t dig deeply, you might as well not do it,” he said.

“Sometimes your hands are the best tools you’ve got.”

Members of the Upper Delaware chapter planted about 300 willows as well as a mix of 25 other young trees along the creek’s bank, including red oak, green ash, swamp rose, butter bush and silky dogwood.

“If there are no terrific floods, there will be a forest of willows that will hold the bank,” Fullerton said.

Last September, Ivan, a tropical depression storm, wiped out a collection of streamco willows planted by chapter members last spring. A streamco willow is a hybrid tree that does not reproduce.

“Hopefully they get enough of a chance to stabilize themselves,” Fullerton said of the sandbar willows. “We’ll see. It’s all a waste of time if we get another Ivan.”

The Upper Delaware chapter also planted about 1,000 streamco willows and 50 sandbar willows on the Callicoon Creek’s bank at the Callicoon Creek Park.

The chapter has 68 members.