Yellow Fish Road (YFR) is Trout Unlimited Canada’s signature education program. The award winning national program teaches youth about the protection of our waters though the reduction of storm water pollution. Learning is linked to action through fun and interactive presentations and community-based storm drain painting projects. The program’s bright “Yellow Fish” are featured by storm drains in most major communities across Canada, serving as a reminder that ‘Rain Only’ should go from the road to our rivers. Participants mark local storm drains with yellow fish symbols and distribute educational doorhangers to homes in the area, helping to raise awareness of storm water pollution.
In most municipalities across Canada, storm drains flow untreated directly into local rivers and streams. Other than clean rainwater, almost anything that gets into our storm drains harms fish and other aquatic lives as well as Canadians who need clean water. Common contaminants include car soap, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, dirt, oil, car fluids, pet feces, garbage and construction materials. These all impact our waterways and the life they support. Polluted runoff happens anywhere people use or alter the land, and water falls on hard surfaces like roofs, driveways, parking lots and roads and cannot seep into the ground. These impervious surfaces create a large amount of runoff and fast pathway for pollutants to be carried to our waterways.
The Yellow Fish Road program educates the public about the impact of pollution entering our storm drains and how storm water pollution can harm fish, wildlife and reduce water quality for human use. This program runs best from the beginning of April until the end of October, and is ideal from school classes from Grade 2-12.
For more information about this program, view the full article here. You can also visit Trout Unlimited Canada's website at http://tucanada.org/yellow-fish-road/.