For Anglers Our Common Ground is on the Water
A Conversation With Science on the Fly Director Allie Cunningham and Co-Founder Johnny Land Le Coq
A little more than five years ago, I met Johnny Land Le Coq, the founder of Fishpond, in Telluride. I was working at Telluride Fly Shop and Johnny was in town fishing with his new friend, Dr. Max Holmes, the now President and CEO of Woodwell Climate Research Center. These two had sparked an idea: To unite
the fly fishing community and river scientists to study, protect and restore rivers around the world. And the power was in its simplicity: We’d deploy an already dedicated and passionate group—anglers. I volunteered on the spot to be our first community scientist and started sampling right there on the San Miguel in Telluride. Since then, we’ve grown this from a group of three to more than 350, sampling on more than 150 rivers in six countries. We’ve tapped the deep expertise of Woodwell Climate’s scientists to ground our work. And we’ve found a common thread that binds this vast network—one that bridges state and country borders—this deep and unshakeable love for our home waters.
I caught up with Johnny to celebrate five years of this Science on the Fly community, to talk about where we started and where we go from here.
Science on the Fly Co-Founders Max Holmes and John Land LeCoq researching a river in Alaska. Photo Credit: Stephen Rockwood
Allie Cunningham: I keep thinking about community—nationally and globally—and Science on the Fly has stayed focused on building that community in the last five years, including taking the last year to nurture its existing community instead of continuing to grow. Why is it important to keep investing in building community particularly around getting to know, love and safeguard our rivers?
Johnny Land Le Coq: If you look at the world right now and how fractured we are here at home, I think it's important to understand what unites us. An important part of our American identity, and a big part of it, is our 643 million acres of federally protected landscape. People value that. People value those rivers and water and open spaces and habitat. And I think once you start to lose that, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, you lose a part of our identity. So I think we have to speak up, and I think Science on the Fly is simply a conduit to reach and to talk to people and open up these new relationships that can lead us down a lot of different paths.
Science on the Fly to me is hugely important because communities across all these sampling sites across the United States, Chile, the UK, Canada, Brazil, all these places where we're opening this up, is opening up friendships and it's opening up ways to where we find this common ground and to where we can say, “Hey, I don't care if you're left or right, let's try to protect this and let's try to make sure that these permanent protections can come into place because we love these places and they feed us—in more ways than one.”
Fishing people are community.
AC: One thing we’ve worked on is to invite people in, not to push, but pull them in—and allow them to pull us into their communities at the same time. I think that's a very rare thing and it has felt like a really great place to start building trust, which is pretty key right now. So let’s talk about where that common ground lies for all of us here with Science on the Fly: fishing. In your opinion, what is that connection between being someone who fishes and who is also called to safeguard those rivers and those fish? Why is that so important—and connecting?
John Land Le Coq and Nate Holmes celebrating on the river. PC: Stephen Rockwood
JLLC: Well first of all, I think anglers and those that fish find that there is a mystery to water and what lies beneath the surface which you can't see. I'm always trying to figure out why people like to fish? Why do we go there? It is magical.You never know when something's going to hit your fly. And you're trying to understand an element of that habitat or of that wet world that's not ours. I think there's such a mystery to this, that it draws people in. And as anglers, we love our home waters. What we find in our own backyards or local communities is essential to the framework of progressive conservation. So I think the common ground with fishing people is simply nature. It's really not about the fish. They fish, but they're going there to experience this much bigger picture and story, both physically and spiritually. For those of us working within the framework of Science On The Fly, we have found a common bond of hope, of making a clear difference for the future of habitat protection, and a meandering way to collectively tell our stories about the rivers we love.
It's a community. I mean, fishing people are a community. And if I look at how Max and I connected through fishing and you and I connected through fishing and all the people in the community we’ve built together, it's powerful. We have a common element that we thread through our lives and that is a love for habitat. We love the species that are in the water and on the banks. And it's infectious. And it’s this tapestry that holds us together.
And why are we great advocates? You can't talk effectively about something unless you really, really passionately feel it. And that passion, that heartbeat, it's palpable. We wear it on our sleeves and that power, that passion and our voices can carry to policy. The data that we collect matters, but the heart of what we’re doing binds us together as a group to be able to collectively go and tell a story—together—to go into Washington, to talk to senators, to talk to people about these places. That's the power of this organization.
John Land Le Coq speaking to senators in Washington D.C. Photo Credit: Eric Lee.
I'm just a trout guy.
AC: You talked about a connection to our home waters and I'd love to hear your story. Can you tell us about your home waters?
Photo Credit: Stephen Rockwood
JLLC: I grew up in Colorado with parents who loved to go fishing and we had a cabin up on a lake near Estes Park, and when I was maybe four or five years old, I caught a fish with my dad. It's just one of those things that I'll never forget. I would often as a child venture out by myself with my fishing pole and end up exploring everything around me, and it’s carried through my life. If we can make people love this sport of fishing, they'll pass it on to their children and it perpetually creates this love of nature. If we don't have those sports or outdoor activities, we don't get people involved and we can lose that powerful connection and that powerful voice. Learning to love the outdoor world, at whatever age it happens, is transformative in the ways it brings a focus to the fragility and importance of biodiversity.
But my story is, as a Colorado boy, I love my home. I'm just a trout guy. I love trout. I love high mountain streams. I love high mountain lakes because that's what I grew up with and I love beaver ponds and I love slow water like that. And it shaped my life. For 32 years I've lived on a ranch, and I got there because of fishing and because it had some ponds and it reminded me of when I was a kid. I raised my girls there. Those beaver ponds that we fish on my ranch are everything. And they're fish that may be sometimes as big as my finger, but it gives me so much joy. That’s my home water. I’m pretty simple. I love it. I love it.
AC: There's something to be said for that simple joy and just how much that can make us feel alive and connected to the places we live. And so many of our community scientists talk about how sampling has helped them get to know their river in a much more intimate way, even though they’ve been fishing their home waters for years. It's really beautiful. Why is it important for us to get to know our home river? Even if you're not an angler, why is it important to notice what's going on in your own backyard?
JLLC: I was listening to a woman speak this morning about snow, and the sounds of snow when it’s falling. Is there a sound to snow? If you listen hard enough, there is, and I think that when we observe peripherally and slow down to more closely observe that which we find around us, the world unfolds itself in wonderful ways. When we slow down and we intently listen, observe and feel, we begin to understand the nature of life in more meaningful ways. Sometimes we just need to not try to understand it, not try to quantify it in different ways, but just to watch it, let it absorb within our system, and it will inform us in ways we can't even comprehend. That lingers with you, in your actions and your purpose in life. The process of sampling our home waters brings us closer to a source of joy and a way to better understand how we are connected. There exists a keen sense of responsibility for the moving thread of rivers that nurture our lives, and finding a sense of purpose or a way to hopefully help craft the protection of this living source is fundamental to our community scientists.
When you're fishing, you're surrounded by the habitat that you love, and Science on the Fly gives people an opportunity to go deeper, to give back and to tell a story. I think that's what people are resonating with.
Nature can pull us together.
AC: I love that. So it's been a little over five years since we started this thing. How does it feel, looking back at where we started and where we are now? And as we step into our next five years, what’s giving you hope?
JLLC: It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are, the hope is that we can communicate the importance of biodiversity and the importance of these species and what it means to us as a people, as a culture, as a world. We have hundreds of species going extinct. Climate change is very real. These water samples are giving us an opportunity to understand and feel the true importance of the natural world. And if we're successful in communicating why we're doing this and if our community keeps sharing their story, people will understand that there's a pathway here to something that I need to pay more attention to.
A lot of people don't get into the woods or float rivers, but it doesn't mean they don't love nature. So what I'm hopeful about is that we can continue to personally experience these places and have fun and develop new relationships through our pursuit of that. And that we can together tell a story that's compelling enough to where people listen. They take it to their community, their board of directors, their town councils, whatever it may be to say, “Hey, this is important. We need to protect this.”
And if we can do that, it's going to pull us all together as a community. That's what I'm hopeful for, that we remove some of the business that is just tearing us apart. And I think maybe nature can pull us together. So let's hope for that.
Science on the Fly has always been a community effort. Built from the ground up, one river and stream at a time, the fly fishing community shows up—and it's not just to fish. Join us to celebrate our community and pitch in to help build the next five years of Science on the Fly.
