Protecting vegetation along stream banks and in overflow areas critical to life in streams, flood prevention

Please click on photo to Enlarge view of Damen Casteel and his daughter, Kristen, fishing in the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River about 100 yards south of Martin Luther King Drive (Sixth Street) in Fayetteville, Arkansas

The Casteel residence is on South Hill Avenue on the east side of the Hill Place/Aspen Ridge site.

The removal of trees and brush along the riparian zone of the Town Branch causes the water temperature to rise and teams with the siltation that makes the stream shallow to reduce the water's fish population. In fact, such species as rock bass and smallmouth bass no longer are caught there. Even red horse suckers and green sunfish are now rare in such parts of this stream and other tributaries of the West Fork of the White River that flow from urban areas.