The Salmonfly Project: Anglers, Insect Conservation, and the Future of Freshwater Streams

Insects play a critical role in rivers, lakes, and streams, acting as a vital food source for many animals and maintaining the health of these freshwater ecosystems. A few of these insects include: mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. The bad news? They are in decline. The good news? There is something we can do about it. This is a new topic for us and one that we are excited to explore.

Joining us to dive into the aquatic world are Jackson Birrell and James Frakes, co-founders of the Salmonfly Project, which is based here in Missoula, Montana and aims to conserve stream insects. Jackson is Executive Director of the Salmonfly Project and is a PhD graduate from the University of Montana, where he studied the factors that shape aquatic insect distributions and the causes of salmonfly declines across the Rockies. James is the Salmonfly Project’s Chief Operations Officer and also a graduate from the University of Montana where he received his Master's degree in Aquatic Ecology. As an avid fly fisher, he is passionate about continuing his research on insect decline and developing projects to save the hatches he knows and loves.

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Photo Credit: Jenny Walker

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society, where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate.

Rachel: Hi, I’m Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: Insects play a critical role in rivers, lakes, and streams, acting as a vital food source for many animals and maintaining the health of these freshwater ecosystems. A few of these insects include: mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. The bad news? They are in decline. The good news? There is something we can do about it. This is a new topic for us and one that we are excited to explore.

Rachel: Joining us to dive into the aquatic world are Jackson Birrell and James Frakes, co-founders of the Salmonfly Project, which is based here in Missoula, Montana, and aims to conserve stream insects. Jackson is executive director of the Salmonfly Project and is a PhD graduate from the University of Montana, where he studied the factors that shape aquatic insect distributions and the causes of salmonfly declines across the Rockies. James is the Salmonfly Project’s chief operations officer and also a graduate from the University of Montana where he received his master's degree in aquatic ecology. As an avid fly fisher, he is passionate about continuing his research on insect decline and developing projects to save the hatches he knows and loves.

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter, Jackson and James! We're very excited to have you both here today.

Jackson: Thanks for having us.

James: Yeah, thank you so much. We’re excited.

Matthew: So Jackson and James, you were both at the University of Montana, and I'm assuming that's where you met. What was the spark that made you want to start the Salmonfly Project?

Jackson: That's a great question. While James and I were both in graduate school—he was getting his master's, I was getting my PhD—and we were both working on really similar topics. Essentially our research—we thought it was relevant to conservation, and in kind of our off time, we were looking for groups, whether it's government agencies or nonprofits that were focused on this issue of aquatic insect declines—how to solve it, what to do about it. And we were realizing that very few groups were focused on this effort. And then I sort of had like a presentation at the university with some of the university's funders. It was like a brainstorming session with these funders about how to get the university more money. And because I presented, all of the topics [were] about using the angling world as a way to, you know, promote the university, the research that's going on. And it was just this “aha” moment of, “Okay, there's this gap, and there's this whole industry tied to what we do.” And of course I realized that, but it really, it was this big “aha” moment. And I ran back to the lab, and James was at his computer, and I said, “James, we need to start a nonprofit.”

James: Yeah, you came down, you were all pumped up from this meeting, and you're like, “Hey, I think we should be business partners, and we should start a conservation nonprofit that is, you know, focused towards fly fishing, as well.” And I'm like, “This literally sounds like my dream. Let's do this thing.”

Jackson: So we were kind of the perfect team because I come at the aquatic insect science conservation from the really buggy side, where I fell in love with the aquatic insects first. And then James, he joined the lab through his interest in fishing. So both of our backgrounds make a really good match for, you know, doing the science, working with the anglers, understanding that world, bridging those connections.

Matthew: It seems a really serendipitous moment, frankly. It's also how so many nonprofits start. There's an idea, and enthusiasm, and the energy to get it going. So what, what does the Salmonfly Project do?

James: Our mission is to conserve aquatic insects, and we do that through research and monitoring projects. We also have a strong educational pillar, and also, we perform guided management. And so we use our data to help inform management decisions and things like that.

Jackson: But we really are a collaborative organization. And how I like to say it, also expounding on what James said, is that the angling world—all of these longtime anglers—have observed declines in aquatic insects. And that's anecdotal. But also you pair that with all of these case studies in science that supports this problem of an aquatic insect decline. And we also know that there's a massive decline in terrestrial invertebrates and insects in general, right? So it makes sense.

Jackson: But if you are a watershed manager and you're interested in conserving a particular watershed or fishery, then it doesn't really matter what's happening at the national level for the local conservation, you need to know the status of the bugs, the trends of those bugs on your river. And the causes of the declines. What are the vulnerable species? Because the problems, the vulnerable species, the trends are gonna vary from river to river, from state to state. And that's the data that we try to generate, either through research and monitoring, like James said, or by mining data from other people that's collected by the U.S. government, or whoever. And then we work with our local partners, watershed groups, Trout Unlimited chapters—that's another nonprofit—other nonprofits, the local state agencies to then integrate the insects into the management plans, the restoration plans, and bring them more to the forefront instead of the background of the conservation.

Matthew: Sounds a lot like the approach that we take to conservation, but with a really focused group.

Jackson: Well, yeah. I mean, the Xerces Society is fantastic, and has a massive scope and it is quite similar in ways, you're right.

Matthew: Yeah. Having that—the science, the evidence that underpins the decision making and the policy changes, and then the management on the ground is so important. I mean, salmonfly? Why that one in particular? I mean, is there a special reason why it represents your work?

James: Yeah, definitely. I would speak for Jackson and I and say it's probably both of our favorite insects. And that stems from the fact that we both were studying it so deeply in grad school. Jackson was working on projects about their behavior, their distribution. I was doing research on their physiology, like their tolerance to heavy metals, and temperature, and things like that. When you work on a bug that long you fall in love with it. So it's sort of become the mascot of the organization. A lot of people think that we just study salmonflies, which is not the case, right? We study the entire aquatic insect community. But it's such an important insect to the fishing community as well, right? These are the largest stoneflies in the world, and when they hatch, they create the most amazing fishing opportunities. So it really rings a bell with the angling community as well as, you know, being important to Jackson and I.

Jackson: When we first started having this conversation, we thought about naming it something really boring, but really descriptive of what we did. Like the Aquatic Insect Monitoring and Management Network. “Oh, that's so terrible and so boring.” But if we integrate this really famous insect name into it that any angler that fishes a lot, they know, so there's an immediate connection there with the fly fishing world, and that's the industry, the population that we work with. So it seemed like an obvious name, and a lot more fun than, you know, some very academic sounding name.

Rachel: I agree with that. I like the name a lot. I think it makes a lot of sense. I love hearing the background about it, too. So let's talk about the bugs! I mentioned in the beginning mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies are kind of these three main orders of insects that you work on. So, going to the basics, are they actually flies? Because they have flies in the name, right? And how are they related to each other?

Jackson: Yeah. Fantastic question. Well, common names are funny because, you know, we refer to them in the fishing world as all kind of “bugs.” But if you're talking about true bugs, that's Hemiptera, that's totally different. So flies, there's everything from snake flies to, you know, true flies to whatever, but that’s just the common name. So they are flies in that they fly, right? But these are of course unique groups of insects. There are many, many kinds of aquatic insects, but the most—. I think most of your listeners are buggy people, in general, but they might not fly fish. But there are many, many kinds of aquatic insects, especially, you know, those that inhabit rivers and streams, like trout streams, which we focus on, but the ones that draw the most attention are the mayflies, stoneflies, and the caddisflies. But there's also, of course, true flies. So people, if they want the Latin, Ephemeroptera are the mayflies, Plecoptera are the stoneflies, Trichoptera are the caddisflies, and then Diptera are the true flies. But you, of course, get dragonflies and damselflies in there. You, of course, get beetles. But the most important food resources that anglers capitalize on are the mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies.

Jackson: You asked how they're related—I can dive into that. But mayflies are the most evolutionarily ancient order of flying insect, along with the dragonfly group, the Odonata. And we always like to tell people they predate flowers, they predate the dinosaurs, they predate the continents as we see them now. They're a very, very ancient group of critter, and when they first popped out of the rivers, so to speak, the world looked a lot different than it does now. So they're very basal in what we would call the insect phylogeny, the insect lineages. And then you have the stoneflies, which came about tens of millions of years later. They're still quite ancient though. And those groups are both within the incomplete metamorphosis group of insects—they don't have a pupal stage. Versus the caddisflies—they are very closely related to moths and butterflies, and there's actually a lot of similarities. Most caddisflies spin silk, just like a lot of caterpillars do, to make their pupal chambers, but they have that intermediate stage of the larva, pupae, and then adult. And that's the same with the true fly groups, as well—they have a pupil stage.

Rachel: I'm gonna ask you a question about caddisflies just because it's so cool and I love caddisfly larvae. I live in Target Range, which if you're not from Missoula, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but very close to the Bitterroot, which is one of our rivers. I was out swimming and I came up to the shore and I saw these little markings, all along the shoreline. And I was like, “What is that?” And I followed it, and there was this little caddisfly larvae just zooming along. It was so cool. But can you tell us a little bit about their larvae and why they're so cool?

Jackson: Yeah. So caddisflies, there are several main groups. I'll touch on that first. There are case-making caddisflies, and net-spinning caddisflies, and free-living caddisflies. The free-living caddisflies, they, you know, walk around on the rocks, onto the rocks, like all aquatic insects. We should, we should probably just say that aquatic insects in streams, they're not in the water column, they're on the rocks, or sand, or whatever the substrate is, right? They're not floating in the water column. And the free-living caddis, they're kind of normal insects. But then the case-making caddisflies, they use their silk glands—which are near their mouths—to glue together rocks and sticks to make like a shell around them, and that protects them from invertebrate predators that might want to eat them. The trout, or whatever fish you're thinking about, will still eat the caddisfly, but it does protect them from the other invertebrates.

Jackson: And then there's this massive group called the net-spinning caddisflies, and they make underwater webs just like a, you might think of a spider. In a stream, you, of course, have your flow, and the caddisflies will bridge together little cobbles and whatnot and make this silken net, chamber, funnel and it's a filter feeding apparatus, and a home—they live inside of it. The food washes through that net and then they pick little food items off of it. They're omnivores, so they eat little tiny insects, little tiny mayflies. They eat bits of detritus, they eat salmonfly poop, they eat little bits of algae—really whatever comes in into their net.

Jackson: But you can imagine making a spiderweb, essentially, underwater is a difficult task. You have to combat this flow, and if the caddisfly washes into the flow by accident, it's a sitting duck for, you know, for the trout. So it doesn't want that. So it is a lot of work. And they don't make them nightly or whatever, like spiders do. It's a more or less permanent retreat over time. But occasionally a rock will shift, it's—the net is no longer pointed into the flow to capture the food, and they need to make a new one. Maybe the rock rolls over it, and eventually they'll have to start over. So then they have two options: do they make the net? Or do they steal a net? And that's really fun.

Jackson: So a lot of these caddisflies—they're called hydropsychids. Anglers will know them as spotted sedges. It's a very big group of aquatic insects that makes up most of the summer caddis hatch, right? Hatch is the emergence—is what we call in the fly fishing world—the emergence from the water stage to the adult, terrestrial stage in the insects. And that's what we capitalize on in fishing. So these caddisflies will sometimes hunt around for a case that will fit them—or, excuse me—a net. And then they have this ability, it's called stridulating. That's a fancy word for what crickets do—it's a chirp. Crickets rub their legs together to make a chirp. Well, the caddisfly, they have these ridges on the underside of their chin, and they'll rub their front leg against it and it'll make this chirp. And researchers in the lab have studied this—it's pretty, it's pretty wild. So the caddisfly, the invading caddisfly will start stridulating, it'll start chirping. And depending on the amount of chirping, how loud it is, that will intimidate the caddisfly that's in the tree—the one that's being invaded. And sometimes if the chirping is aggressive enough, it'll just get out and leave. And if not, they go to battle. So they have these big mandibles, and they'll fight, they'll wrestle. And one of them will get ripped out of the net and into the flow, and the other one will be the survivor. So, oftentimes, especially in rivers, it's hard to see this invisible insect world. But it's like a full-on Serengeti down there. The insects are moving around, they're feeding on one another, they're competing with one another, they're interacting in these really fascinating ways. They're not just sedentary critters hanging out.

Rachel: That is so exciting. I'm so glad I asked about that. I actually did not know that they did that. I just know about the ones that create their own casing, and that was the one I saw. But yeah, who knew this whole battle—haha—was happening in these streams? That's really, really amazing. Thank you so much for explaining that. Caddisflies are so cool.

Jackson: They are cool.

Matthew: So in terms of diversity, we talked a bit about the fact that there are the three orders: mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies. I mean, are they diverse orders? Do we find them everywhere? If I went to any stream and stepped into it, would I find caddisflies?

James: Yeah, yeah. So of the big three, the EPT, or the mayfly, stoneflies and caddis—those are, I would say, the main important aquatic insects, especially in healthy trout streams, like what we have around Missoula. Like for instance, mayflies and stoneflies both have about 3,500 different species. And that's distributed across the globe. There's a lot of species that we have around the Missoula area, the greater Rocky Mountain West, and you will definitely stumble into mayfly, stoneflies and caddis if you end up, you know, stumbling into a stream. The caddis though are significantly more diverse than the other two. They have about 17,000 different species. So there's tons of different types of caddis. The funny thing about the caddis though is, you know, being a fisherman, people generally just refer to caddis as caddis. You maybe break it down into like two or three categories. You've got the Mother's Day caddis, you've got the spotted sedges, and if you're getting really crazy, you've got the October caddis, which is a large-bodied caddis that comes out around October. But it's just funny, the mismatch between the diversity, and the depth in which the fishermen go. I mean, if we look at mayflies, if you're a really dedicated fly fisherman, you will know the Latin names of many different types of mayflies, because they're so important—their color, size, and emergence timing is very important to the trout. Caddis just sort of get glommed into a huge group, and you can basically have one or two flies that covers the entirety of the caddis hatch.

Jackson: And then it's even funnier because the true flies that we've been kind of touching on, they're the most biodiverse. There's more than 50,000 species of aquatic true flies, and that includes things like midges, crane flies, mosquitoes. And a lot of that diversity is in still water environments, but you still have a ton of those that live in rivers and streams. But they tend to not make fishable hatches. So the bugs don't behave or present themselves to trout in a way that's easy to feed on, so the angling world doesn't really capitalize on it even though they are there. And if you say like, “What's important?” It depends on if you're an angler, or if you're, you know, like a conservation biologist and just thinking about biodiversity, you can come at it from all of these different angles. But as a group, they're all very important for the food web, but they definitely fill different amounts of the overall biodiversity percentages.

Matthew: And different types. I know there's—. I mean, talk about a creek, and it could be a mountain tumbling whitewater, or it could be lowland, sluggish, meandering around. Do different conditions have different species in them? Or are some types of creeks support a greater diversity of these insects?

Jackson: Absolutely. And with this, it's probably a good segue into talking about water quality, as well. But absolutely, just like any other critter, each individual species will have its optimal ranges of habitat, whether that's, you know, it's temperature range, or the substrate that it likes to live on. Some insects only live in silt, some only live on large cobbles. Some live in very warm water, some live only in the coldest of coldest of glacial streams. So you get all of that variation. But if we're generalizing with these large groups of insects, as you get higher up into cooler, more headwater streams, you tend to get more of these stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisflies, and that's why they're very important on trout streams. Trout streams are cold because trout need cold water, and those are the environments that typically promote or harbor a lot of those kinds of insects. If you go to a warm or still water environment, you're gonna lose the stoneflies, for sure, and then you're gonna have different kinds and usually fewer of mayflies and caddisflies. And then you're gonna get a lot more beetles, a lot more dragonflies, and way more of the true flies. So our bias, so to speak, in this conversation and in our nonprofit about stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisflies, is really just because we focus on trout streams. If we were thinking about, you know, tropical still water environments, we wouldn't be talking much about stoneflies. They're there, but they're not nearly as diverse until—or abundant until you get up into the big mountain areas where everything's colder.

Matthew: Yeah, so it seems like Missoula was a great place to start this there in the mountains.

Jackson: Haha.

Matthew: Yeah. I'm from Britain, and I know in Britain the term riverflies is increasingly used to encompass this particular group. And I mean, James, you refer to them as EPT. I mean, is there a kind of a preferred collective name for them, or does you know, does salmonfly cover that need for you?

James: Yeah, I like the term EPT. I mean, it is kind of science-y, but I think it helps people get involved with the idea of the Latin, and a little bit more in depth into the understanding some of the entomology behind what they're doing when they're going fishing, right? So EPT stands for Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera. Those are the mayflies, stoneflies, and caddis. And those are the three most sensitive groups of aquatic insects. And they directly relate to the health of the stream that they live in. So if you have high percentages of EPT in your river, and low amounts of non-insects, and midges, and the true flies, then that means that you have a very healthy stream.
And as that percentage decreases and they become replaced by other more tolerant species, that's indicative of reduced water quality. So I like that because it both hits the conservation aspect and the fishing aspect. I think if more people knew what EPT was the fishing culture would be in a better place.

Rachel: Yeah, and that's the perfect segue to my next question. Obviously they’re indicators of the health of these streams, but why are they important to aquatic ecosystems?

Jackson: Good question. We always say, no matter which way you shake it, aquatic insects are really important. So they live on the substrate, or under it, and all of these different species feed on different food resources. And from that you can call them functionally important. So a lot of the insects feed on algae—they scrape algae off of the tops of rocks. Others eat detritus, or rotting leaves, woody debris. And that releases those nutrients into the environment, and captures those. Others filter feed gunk that's floating through the river. Others are predators, right? And when you have all of this functional diversity, right—not necessarily species diversity—that keeps everything running how it should, it keeps the river clean and healthy. From the opposite angle, aquatic insects are really important just because they are the majority of the species. So if you count all fresh water biodiversity—all freshwater species worldwide—aquatic insects are over 70% of that biodiversity. So we always joke, “If you round up, everything's an insect.” And that's of course, you know, kind of a joke. But, yeah, they're really important from that angle.

Jackson: And when you have a very biodiverse ecosystem with a lot of species that have different functions, different tolerances, usually that community is more resilient to disturbances. If you have a disturbance come through, a lot of the abundance goes down, but because you have all of that diversity, that network of interactions remains and then it can recreate itself over time, right? And then also from the food web perspective, they feed the trout that people like to catch, as well as a host of other fish. They feed birds. They're incredibly important in riparian areas for food resources. And then through the connection with fish and fly fishing, they're also economically important. So no matter which way you approach the question, they are really fantastic. And, and I think no matter who you are, you can get behind aquatic insect conservation, even if you're not an angler, even if you're just a, a conservation-minded individual.

Matthew: We mentioned at the beginning that these insects are in decline. How do we know that they're in decline? Do we have historical data, for example, that we can compare current monitoring with?

James: Yeah. It is sad. The current literature is pretty clearly showing that if you just sort of round up, yes, aquatic insects are in decline. The number is 23%. This came from a study that came out in 2023. But basically the way that they found this decline is they mined through a bunch of publicly available data across the United States—from the EPA, from the Forest Service—and they just made a huge meta-analysis, and looked for changes in density, and then also percentages of particular groups and how they have changed over period of time. They found that biodiversity also declined by about 7%.

Jackson: That time period for the study was from 1998 to 2018, so it was—if you're talking about abundance or density, if you wanna get more specific—it was 23% over 20 years, so just over 1% per year. For, you know, this country, we don't have a great large nationwide analysis that goes deeper in time than that. That was really the first really thorough survey for the United States. But there's many, many, many case studies that look at, you know, for example, stonefly diversity in Illinois—they've lost 20% of all their stonefly since the 1950s. Or really famous mayflies that have come out of the Mississippi River—they used to come out in the tens of billions—it's declined by 80%. Or now we have the first examples ever of endangered stoneflies, like threat—federally listed under the Endangered Species Act. They live up in the glacial streams in Northern Montana. They’re in decline. So, piecemealing all of those case studies, and then combining with a nationwide survey that looked at 6,500 sites over about a 20 year period—it was really thorough. And then combining that again with the angling anecdotal observations of thousands of anglers fishing 20, 30, 60 years and seeing changes, it's fairly convincing. But the reason why the Salmonfly Project exists is because the data is insufficient. To promote or facilitate effective conservation, we need a lot more science to provide the necessary data.

Matthew: Yeah, no, that's great. When you said it was 23% over 20 years, that's almost exactly the same level of decline for butterflies, too. There was the State of the Butterflies group that did from 2000 to 2020—they did a 20-year span—and that's almost exactly the same rate of decline. I don't know whether they're at all related, but it's just that, sort of the parallel nature of that struck me. Without getting too gloomy, do you know what's causing this decline?

Jackson: That's the million-dollar question. The easiest answer is a lot of things. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the public gets tired of that answer. But that's the fact of the matter. I don't think there's just one smoking gun. But in rivers, the fundamental habitat unit is water. And at least in the Western U.S., if I was to point to one thing that could fix it, it would be more water. But there are surely a lot of other factors that go into it, as well.

Matthew: Definitely. Maybe I could just ask: I mean, what kind of research you are doing, and through the Salmonfly Project, and how that supports, you know, supports and informs what we could be doing to overcome these declines?

James: We have two main types of research projects. The basic bread and butter of what our organization does is monitoring aquatic insects. So on most of our streams and rivers, there's not adequate data on what the current population statuses of our aquatic insects. So we're trying to fill that gap by establishing annual monitoring programs where we go and systematically keep track of these things. But another really cool piece of research that we've started to dive into is what we're calling like historical comparison studies. So what we've done is we've gone and looked for old surveys, like from the seventies and eighties, and then we, as perfectly as possible, try to replicate those and that should allow us to make assumptions about changes over that timeframe. So we have a project like that going on the Madison River, which we're almost finished with our field work for that. We have one going on the Blackfoot River, and we also have one on the Yellowstone—all in Montana. So keep an eye out for an exciting paper about that soon.

Jackson: And that's really just the first step—is establishing those trends. Because the trend, whether you're talking about a trend nationwide, or more useful, I would say, at a watershed level, is just step one, right? You've documented the problem, but then how do you fix it? Now you're coming back to your earlier question of what’s the causal factor? So in all of our projects, we're not only monitoring the aquatic insects with these robust methods, but we're also focusing in on the environmental factors that often drive and shape aquatic insect distributions and densities and vulnerabilities. So I talked about water. That's, of course, the fundamental habitat unit—you can't have a river without water. You get too little water your habitat just shrinks over time. I don't think this is exactly the case, but if you also found that nationwide, stream discharges are 20% lower, then that would make sense. There's 20% less water, there's 20% less aquatic insect production.

Jackson: But it's a little bit more complicated than that because when they're looking at the aquatic insect abundances, they're not measuring necessarily all of the production out of that river, they're looking at numbers per square foot, right? Or per unit area. And if that density has shrunk, that doesn't necessarily just mean that there's less water. Because if you're sampling ideal habitat, right, in a river, and the river channel has shrunk, no matter when you sample—when there's a lot of water or a little water—you're sampling in the same kind of habitat, right? This ideal habitat. And the density within that ideal habitat has decreased. That points to some kind of water quality or habitat suitability issue beyond just amount of water. So if we talk about—with anglers that are concerned about dramatic declines in fishing hatches, the bug hatches—it's gonna be this combination of decreased densities, numbers per unit area, but also habitable area. So numbers per area has decreased, but also area has decreased. And it's the combination of that that's especially ecologically pertinent because that means it's less food for the trout, it means there's less food for the birds, it means there's less bugs for the anglers to capitalize on.

Jackson: But it's the other factors besides water that will, I think more often than not, especially affect the measurement of density are temperature, sediment, and nutrient levels. And I don't know how much I should go into those, but the combination of those can make the rivers less suitable to these sensitive aquatic insects. They get too warm for them to complete their life cycles. If you get too much nutrients, you get more algae—that leads to less oxygen, particularly at night. Fine sediments [are] really bad for trout streams because most of these invertebrates live on and under the rocks. If you have fine sediment and sand filling in those little interstitial spaces, that's habitat loss—that's where they live. And all of a sudden you just have these tops of rocks showing, instead of all of this surface area of this three-dimensional rock. So it's a really complicated question, but that's probably the most important conservation implication down the line for the Salmonfly Project—is at a watershed specific scale, identifying the most important factors, and then working with the local organizations to try and shift how management or restoration is done to improve the situation.

Rachel: Yeah, I was just thinking about all the things that get dumped into our rivers through runoff, whether it's like pesticides or other things that are being used across the landscape. So I'm very interested to see down the road what you find, and working with these watersheds, it's really important and exciting work that you're both doing. So how can people get involved? What can people do to help aquatic insects—whether on a local or a larger scale—getting involved with what you guys are doing?

James: Well, we're a relatively new nonprofit, right? We're rather young. So trying to increase our membership. If people want to get out in the river with us, they can sign up to be a volunteer on our website. If you are working with another watershed group and you think that a monitoring program on your particular river is something you wanna look into, reach out. We're very open to collaboration and we invite people to reach out to us as they see fit.

Jackson: Another thing I would add to that is we have a lot of angular entomology events where we host a streamside event and teach people how to identify the aquatic insects, and we teach them more about the behavior so they can more effectively capitalize on the insects in their fishing game. But it also is really important from our perspective beyond just helping anglers become better fly fishers, in that as they become better observers of these insects, as they begin to be able to tell them apart better, they're gonna be better observers, and that will translate into becoming better stewards. So we have all of these events—all of our field work that we do for our monitoring programs are volunteer assisted. So all day tomorrow I'm going out with six volunteers and we're gonna be sampling the Teton River in Idaho this weekend. And the next week we're gonna be on the Upper South Fork of the Snake over near Jackson, Wyoming doing the same thing.

Jackson: So I travel many months of the year collecting data for the Salmonfly Project—James travels, as well—and when we do this, volunteers come outta the woodwork and they help us collect the aquatic insects, do fine sediment counts, put in temperature loggers. And that's really fun for volunteers because it's this really hands-on experience where they get to see the resource, we teach people as we go about the different bugs, and their functional roles, and all the biodiversity, and then they—it really does help. It's not just like empty bodies out there. We are massively increasing our productivity as we bring more volunteers out there. If we didn't have our volunteer network—and we interact with hundreds every year—we would have to pay staff to do the same thing. And that's a really great way to do it because it's also, it's educational, and it does the work.

Rachel: Volunteers are super important. We have awesome volunteers, as well. If people are outside of the area that you are doing these stream surveys in, is there any sort of program that they can report sightings of different aquatic insects? We talk about iNaturalist and Seek all the time, and I don't know if iNaturalist includes aquatic insects or not, or if you use that data, and that's helpful or not.

Jackson: Yeah, that's a great point. I would definitely say yes. If you are observing aquatic insects, snap a picture, throw an onto iNaturalist or Seek. Right now the algorithms aren't quite as good at identifying aquatic insects as other groups—particularly like plants is really fantastic. I use that all the time. We don't currently have projects that use iNaturalist data because it needs to be at a critical mass to be able to say anything, you know? But over time, if enough people are doing it, and if we can just get people to observe things and learn, it's again, it's pairing usable data with education and outreach, and that is maybe the most important unit of this. Because when push comes to shove, when it comes to conservation, unfortunately, we need really specific data to inform conservation, but in some cases you already kind of know what to do. You know, we need to keep the habitat how it's been. We need to not dewater our rivers. We need to not pollute them. So if we get more people just generally invested in the resource and having a connection with these amazing creatures, then they're already going to end up supporting those kinds of efforts down the line.

Rachel: Yeah, that's a great point.

Jackson: The Salmonfly Project—we were founded in 2022 while James and I were exiting grad school. So we've been working full-time with all of this for about three years, and our current geographic area of influence is the Western United States. So we focus on trout streams specifically that harbor these communities of stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisflies. And right now we are doing research or monitoring projects on 14 trout streams throughout a lot of Montana, as well as Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. And we're increasing our reach all the time throughout the Western U.S. And eventually we would love to be a larger nationwide organization, but being young and just having started, we're trying to grow at a steady rate.

Matthew: It's impressive what you've achieved so far with very limited resources. Inspiring. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for your work, and thank you for being here with us today. This has been a really interesting conversation. We're coming to the end and we always like to wrap up with a couple of standard questions. So the first one I'd like to ask for—to both of you—and you can decide who answers it first—is: what inspired you to pursue a career in insect conservation?

James: Mine is very simple. I figured if I invest my time in learning more about entomology, it has no way that's gonna hurt my fly fishing game. Haha. And that's the honest truth. I got into the bugs because of my love of fishing. And the more I got into it, the more I fell in love with them, and realized how underappreciated they really are, and how fragile they are. And that's really how it happened for me.

Jackson: Mine was the kind of exact opposite trajectory. I was in—doing my undergrad and wanted more field experience. I'd always been into the wildlife biology thing, and I wanted to study reptiles or maybe fish—it was one of those two. And I was looking for a lab to join to participate in some kind of research or field work, and all of the big animal, the big critter labs were full. And one of my friends said, “Oh, there's an opening in the bug lab over there.” And I said, “Oh, that's so boring. I don't want anything to do with that. Like, no, that's—I don't care about insects.” Not actually. But that was only because I really didn't know anything about them. And I had always been focusing on these larger, more charismatic species. And then at my first lab meeting, I was just like blown away. We reviewed this paper on biodiversity, and as your listeners know, invertebrate biodiversity just far outnumbers all of everything else. And then with all of that species diversity, you come all—you get all of that behavioral diversity, all of the wacky life history traits, and things like that. And then when I first sampled a trout stream, and had all like a thousand aquatic insects washed into my net off of two rocks. And I'm not kidding, that's how it is in a trout stream. If you've never caught aquatic insects in a trout stream, there's gonna be one to three thousand individual insects per square foot in a healthy trout stream. And that just, that was it. You know, that sealed the deal. And I started doing research as an undergrad, and then went through grad school. But very serendipitous.

Rachel: I love that. I appreciate the honesty. I came from a similar background, Jackson, as well. Haha. Where it was like all about the charismatic species. Then I came to Xerces and now I'm like, “Oh, this is amazing.” There's so much that people don't understand, and don't know just how cool insects are. So this last question I added special for the two of you. If you could take your fly rod to any river in the world, what would it be—which river—and why?

James: My answer is the river that I've always wanted to hit and I just never made the drive. And that is Silver Creek in Idaho, which is a spring creek. And it is very world famous for its brown drake hatch. And so brown drakes are a special type of mayfly. The Latin is Ephemera simulans. And they come off there in May, and they create these amazing blanket hatches in the evening. And if you hit it right, it can be pretty spectacular, almost like it's snowing there's so many bugs that they're getting in your face, they're getting up your nose. It's like a crazy experience. And you have large, selective trout eating big mayflies off the surface in the dark. And that just sounds so epic to me that I need to go do it. And I'm gonna go do it. I'm just gonna say it right now—I'm gonna go do it.

Jackson: Haha. I would go to Eastern Russia. They have a salmonfly hatch there. And it's a different species of salmonfly—it's almost as big. And it is a hard place to get to, but it's also an amazing trout fishery. And then you have all of the sea run, salmon and stuff. I think that would be a really, really fun place to go to.

Matthew: No, that's great. I love that it's as much about experiencing the hatch as it is about going fishing. So that was really great.

Rachel: Yeah. Thank you both so much for the work that you do. It's so incredibly important. I'm so grateful that we had you come on here. I've learned so much. And on a personal note, my dad is an avid fly fisherman. I mean, it's like almost his whole life. Haha. And he's always tying flies. He is always trying to get out and go fishing. But he's always showing me the flies he ties, and he'll say like, “Oh, this is a mayfly,” and, “This is a stonefly,” and, “This is this.” But he's the type that gets real specific. And then when he comes fishing out here, he's like, “Oh, I had to make these different types of flies!” And he gets so excited. And I'm just so deeply grateful that now I have such a better understanding of what he's talking about. I can say, “Oh yeah, I know that caddisfly.” Like, “I know what you're talking about, dad.” I just so appreciate all the things that I've learned today. But thank you again for your time—we really appreciate it.

James: Thanks for having us. This has been really fun. We appreciate it.

Jackson: Thank you.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-based nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us.

Rachel: If you are already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast or for show notes, go to xerces.org/bugbanter.