Roanoke Times reporter Bill Cochran's latest article talks about Shenandoah National Park Official's controversial plan to rid native brook trout streams of brown trout. With the help of volunteers they have killed over 800 brown trout in an effort to clear the browns from the brookie's habitat. The effort has met with some resistance.
Members of the Fly Fishers of Virginia, a 150-member, Richmond-based group, expressed dismay over the efforts to rid the park streams of brown trout. In a letter to Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright, Dan Genest, president of Fly Fishers of Virginia, stated that the browns pose no serious threat to the native brook population.
"Even worse was that all but a handful of those beautiful trout were thrown on the bank to die rather than being relocated," said Genest.
Trout Unlimited has a different view the plan:
Larry Puckett said that what park officials did, with the help of some TU members, was consistent with national TU policy of invasive species control and native trout preservation.
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National Fish & Game, the National Park Service and the Fish and Game Departments in over 35 states have been waging war on "invasive species of trout" coast to coast since the 1989. They used to use Antimyicin A but it is very hard to come by it is so toxic. The poison of choice is Rotenone, which used to be banned by the EPA until they suddenly decided it wasn't so horrible, toxic and poisonous after all.....and because they were lobbied that "fishery management" needed to be able to "use this tool"......for the "restoration" of various fish. So the EPA "re-registered" Rotenone so it could be used to kill fish, never mind that it brings on Parkinson's Disease symptoms, irritates & damageslungs and skin.
Tens of thousands of pounds of this toxin are used each year....sprayed on lakes, sprayed and dripped into streams...and Rotenone is non-specific, it kills ALL the fish. And the "fishery management" keep up the spraying and dropping for up to 3 years, applying the poison 2x a year until all the "dangerous invasive species" are dead.
Only then they start "reseeding" with "pure" trout/fish which have been deemed genetically pure by a few "biologists" and raised in ---- hatcheries.
But opps....along the way they have killed all the macroinvertebrates and harmed the avian populations which depend on the insects. And they damaged the plankton as well. And who knows how the people that applied it are faring, because in spite of the warnings there are numerous photos on TU chapter sites and in newspapers of people using the product and they are not properly dressed.
The word poison and fish conservation do not belong in the same sentence. And Trout Unlimited should not be Trout Limited. TU, coast to coast supports the use of Rotenone to "restore the natives".
This is a grand experiment in "fishery management" that may end up hurting all of us including the birds and the bees and the critters streamside.
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