Tiny radio transmitters attached to lake trout may allow managers find and destroy their spawning beds-
The illegal or accidental introduction of lake trout to Yellowstone Lake has heavily damaged the native Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout Fishery in the Lake, and more importantly in the spawning streams where they used to provide food for many kinds of wildlife and human anglers too. Lake Trout rarely come to the surface and they eat cutthroat trout. So their biomass is lost to all surface creatures.
There is a long-standing program to catch and kill and lake trout, but it has at most held the lake trout onslaught at bay. Now there is a chance of killing them off (note: not “euthanizing” them) and restoring a great fishery.
The New York Times article below also writes of the decline in the number of people who fish, attributing it to sociological factors. Hmmmm. I slowly stopped fishing mostly because the quality and abundance declined because of diseases like whirling disease, human ruination of wild fisheries, livestock stomping the stream banks, etc.
In Yellowstone, Killing One Kind of Trout to Save Another. By Kirk Johnson. New York Times.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is President of the Western Watersheds Project.
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