WV Misidentifies Official State Fish: It Shouldn't Take Two Years to Fix This...
This has been this way for at least two years…
While researching West Virginia brook trout for content to use on our new WV chapter webpage, NFC Executive Director Bob Mallard stumbled on a webpage housed on the WV Department of Natural Resources website entitlef, Brook Trout Overview.
Bob was admittedly shocked to see a picture of a nonnative brown trout featured on the WV DNR brook trout webpage, especially since brook trout is the official State Fish of West Virginia. He was equally disappointed to see a picture of a brook trout laying on the ground…
After sending several emails to WV DNR to try to get the brown trout picture swapped out for a brook trout picture, and ideally replace the picture of the brook trout laying on the ground with a picture that demonstrated proper fish handling, Bob learned that while housed on the DNR website, the webpage was actually the responsibility of WV Department of Tourism.
Subsequent emails to WV Department of Tourism to try to get the brook trout issue addressed went unanswered. A year or so later, while discussion an unrelated topic with WV DNR, NFC again pointed out the problems with the brook trout informational webpage. DNR acknowledged the problem, but reiterated that there was nothing they could do about it. They said they would reach out to Cepartment of Tourism on our bahalf..
More than six months have passed since speakig with DNR and nothing has changed. NFC tried to reach out to Department of Tourism through Facebool as well, but to no avail. Having exhausted all traditional evenues to try to get the issue resolved, Bob drafted an OpEd and submitted it to several WV newspapers. Hopefully someone will run it, someone at Departent of Tourism will read ot, and it will get fixied…
Wouldn’t somethig like this be more appropriate?
