BIO: ANDY BROWN

Trout Unlimited: Stream Restoration Manager – Southern Appalachians

Andy Brown joined the employment of Trout Unlimited on April 17, 2017 as its Stream Restoration Manager for the Southern Appalachians.  Andy occupies the role formerly served by Damon Hearne.  Andy is collaborating with TU chapters, federal and state natural resource agencies, private landowners and other partners to advance the cause of coldwater fisheries conservation in the mountains of southwest Virginia to north Georgia and upstate South Carolina, including all points in between. 

Andy has degrees in public administration, environmental policy and planning and cultural anthropology.  For 14 years he served as the president and principal conservation planner for Equinox Environmental in Asheville NC, a for-profit consulting firm he founded in 1998 to facilitate conservation and sustainable development.  Andy is also a stonemason and novice blacksmith.  As for fishing, he’s always been more comfortable where he was born and raised on flat, blackwater rivers in northeast NC or in the sounds and surf of the Atlantic Ocean.  But he is now eager to round out his experience by getting more comfortable with a fly rod on swift moving trout waters!  Andy lives in Asheville, NC when he is not on his farm in Buladean (headwaters of Big Rock Creek; Mitchell County NC).  He is married for 24 years and has two daughters aged 17 and 25 and a grandson aged 5.