Urgent situation at Flat Mountain Pond!

[Mattl]

Guys..it's not an artificial pond. It's a pond slightly raised by a dam to help the beavers. This has provided the area with wonderful habitat for all kinds of life from macros to larger mammals. Hopefully the wilderness regulations will discregard the small dam, possibly as just fixing the historical one.-Mattl

 

[NH_Mtn_Hiker]

Guys..it's not an artificial pond. It's a pond slightly raised by a dam to help the beavers. This has provided the area with wonderful habitat for all kinds of life from macros to larger mammals. Hopefully the wilderness regulations will discregard the small dam, possibly as just fixing the historical one.-Mattl

I agree with posterboy, that is funny!

 

[arghman]

If the wilderness regulations coming into place will hamper the continued maintence on the dam..then we will lose Flat Mountain Pond forever because they wont want to spend 50,000 dollars building it and not be able to do maintence. The Forest Service would slowly drain it... I will cry if we lose it, and as a backcountry fly fisherman, hiker, it will be the death of my favorite place in the White Mountains. Write letters to the forest service explaining how wonderful this place is! Even to congress! This is a serious situation. Fish and Game understands the importance of this as a fishery and is fighting to keep it.

I'm not a fisherman but I support the status quo & maintenance of multiple uses in the WMNF.

Reasons such as this are why, though I'm strongly in favor of land protection, I am not in favor of Wilderness expansion.

 

[Frosty]

Guys..it's not an artificial pond. It's a pond slightly raised by a dam

Well, if it is only slightly raised by the dam, it will only be slightly lowered without a dam, so no big deal if the dam is left to fall apart.

 

[Mattl]

Problem is..the beavers arent there as much..So no..we may loose the whole thing almost. -Mattl

 

[Tim Horn]

Mattl I am not trying to flame you just giving my point of view. I am a fishing type. I would urge everyone to consider letting it revert to a natural state. There are plenty of brookies breeding naturally in NH and even in the brooks below flat mountain pond. When those dams erode and fail the beavers will be back to rebuild the only type of dam that should ever be built on such a pristine drainage. A den! There maybe a few years of decline but eventually the ponds will refill and the fishing will be fine. Incidentally the pond is stocked not because it does not or cannot produce a natural population but rather because fishing types in NH demand more fish out of water than the water can support. Catch and release is not a very popular practice at most of the brookie ponds I visit including at flat mountain pond. The limit of 5 pounds or 5 fish is just too generous to sustain a naturally reproducing fish population in ponds with even "light" pressure. In the final analysis restoring natural habitat, limiting harvest and allowing trout to breed naturally regardless of "fishing quality"(in my mind numbers does not equate to quality but for many it does) is the only way we can save our fisheries for future fishertypes. As goverment agencies shed more and more of their interventionist efforts due to budget shortfalls the put and take fisheries will slowly produce fewer and fewer fish. Resulting in fewer fees from licenses and smaller fish and game budgets. We should learn a lesson from Montana and stop polluting our waters with weak gened stockies and let nature get back to work producing fingerlings. Instead of a dam project off in the woods I would rather see the money spent to build access for elderly and handicapped fisherman on ponds reachable by car. Leave the remote ponds natural even if it means catching pickeral and bluegills instead of trout.
Cheers all, fishing season is open! Tim

 

[dug]

I love the spot as well, but it sounds like it's one of the following situations:

-A damned pond by beavers, that will remain whether we intrude or not.
-A damned pond by humans, that will need our intrusion to remain.
-A bog, that will go away.

*There's no "little assistance" we can provide. I vote for letting nature take it's course. If the dam is in disrepair, I feel the money could be better spent elsewhere. My $.02.

 

[MichaelJ]

My vote is to let F&G or the USFS decide. They're the folks with the training and education. If an entire ecosystem has built up around it, and has been relying on the pond for the decades it's been there, then we have a duty to maintain what we have created. If the area will recover, and they should be able to study and determine that, then so be it.

 

[Mattl]

The major issue is always the fact that the forest service is calling the dam a potential hazard to hikers..They think it will blow out and cause a flood. If you look at photos you can clearly see that will not happen. There is so much sediment built up that it will most likely come out very slow if it does. So fish and game would love to not spend money..but the FS are the ones that are forcing it. They are threatening to tear the dam out. The FS is not on my highlest list right now..for some of thier methods..-Mattl

 

[NH_Mtn_Hiker]

The major issue is always the fact that the forest service is calling the dam a potential hazard to hikers..They think it will blow out and cause a flood. If you look at photos you can clearly see that will not happen. There is so much sediment built up that it will most likely come out very slow if it does.....-Mattl

With all due respect Matt, you have no way of knowing that. Dam breaks on even smaller ponds than that have caused significant damage and even fatalities in the past.
This was from a 40 acre pond dam break

Edit: Looks like Flat Mountain Pond is even smaller, about 30 acres....still, you have no way of knowing how much damage would be caused if the dam went.

 

[Mattl]

Yes we do in looking at where it goes, we can get an idea of the volume that would come out as well as where it would flow. This is not Alton or near any major town or city. Pond Brook then flows into the cold river. Before much of that even gets there it will spill over the many many miles of White Mountains. The pond is so shallow and held back by so little compared to a real concrete dam on the major pond and lakes, that it will merely be like a beaver dam going out. This will not be like the great flood that I worked on Nash Steam with that Nash Bog did. The trouble the FS sees is hikers getting injured, which is bull. There is always risks while hiking and heavy flow in rivers are always happening at all times of year depending on weather conditions. Risk is part of hiking, if they are concerned about risk go hang out below Tuckerman Ravine this time of year, you will see far more risk there. -Mattl