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Now
In old-time cowboy movies, the good
guy always wore a white hat and his nemesis carried a black fedora.
The same goes with the colors
green and red.
Green on a map signifies forested
land. Red, though, means trouble.
Trout Unlimited's map of Pennsylvania's
wild brook trout populations is mostly red. Where not colored
that shade, the map is gray, indicating extirpation of the fish.
You have to look hard to find any green on the map. In fact,
only 16 sub-watersheds in our state now support healthy, intact
wild brook trout populations, according to TU.
(Disclosure: I'm a member of
Trout Unlimited).
"Brook trout are the only
trout native to much of the eastern United States," the
conservation organization notes in the introduction to the seminal
"Eastern Brook Trout: Status and Threats" report it
issued this spring.
What's more, the species, Salvelinus
fontinalis, is Pennsylvania's state fish.
We're not taking care of this
species.
And those we've placed in charge
of our fisheries often seem more focused on running hatcheries
since stocking mongrels into put-and-take waters keeps the license
revenue flowing.
And the Fish and Boat Commission
gets its operating budget dollars from license and stamp sales.
"Arguably the most beautiful
freshwater fish, brook trout survive in only the coldest and
cleanest water. In fact, brook trout serve as indicators of the
health of watersheds they inhabit. Strong wild brook trout populations
demonstrate that a stream or river ecosystem is healthy and that
water quality is excellent," TU's report states.
Given the map's largely red
coloration, it's not hard to come to the realization that most
Pennsylvania trout streams are suffering ills.
And those are of human making:
* Removal of streamside vegetation.
* Increasing sedimentation
from developed lands.
* Nutrient runoff.
* Pollution from roads, highways,
parking lots.
* Stocking hatchery fish on
top of wild trout.
While development-damaged streams
can be rehabilitated through tough, hands-on labor, arguably
the best way to protect healthy wild brook trout populations
is to leave the fish alone and protect a stream's surrounding
countryside.
No one seems to know just how
many times and where hatchery-raised fish have been
planted in Pennsylvania.
"It would take a lot more
time than I have to list the many streams that the PFBC stocks
that hold wild brook trout populations," TU's Ken Undercoffer
told me.
"This would entail going
through the stocking schedule and comparing it with the list
of trout streams with natural reproduction."
What's so great about wild
trout?
Eric Palmer, the state of Vermont's
director of fisheries, summarizes the uniqueness of wild fish
on the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department's Web site:
When you catch a wild fish
"you have living proof that the water they came from has
suitable habitat for all of the life-stages of that species.
It is like holding an intact ecosystem in your hand."
What does stocking hatchery
mongrels do to wild fish?
Undercoffer: The negative effects
are many and have been demonstrated by numerous studies including
those by the Fish and Boat Commission.
o Stocking encourages overharvesting.
o Mongrels compete with wild trout for scant resources in infertile
freestone streams, which are the last refuge for wild brookies
in the state.
o Interbreeding between mongrel and wild fish weakens the wild
strain, making them less capable of surviving in the wild.
o Hatchery trout can carry diseases into wild brook trout populations.
Undercoffer again: "I
fish many streams taken off the stocking list during the early
stages of Operation Future in the early 1980s. They have all
improved immensely since stocking was terminated. To ignore the
effects of stocking over native brook trout populations is absurd."
Bob Bachman, a former fisheries
supervisor in Maryland, traveled to Vermont to testify at a recent
meeting concerning a proposal to stock hatchery fish into that
state's most fabled trout stream, the Battenkill.
Bachman has studied wild trout
for years, once spending countless hours perched in a lookout
tower over Pennsylvania's Spruce Creek (arguably the most famous
trout stream in our state).
Hatchery trout dumped into
waters like the Battenkill "run around like a motorcycle
gang making trouble wherever they go," Bachman said.
"Bachman had film footage
that echoed his observations," columnist Dave Mance III
wrote in the Bennington, Vt., Banner.
"Whereas the wild trout
he filmed were lithe, calm creatures who spent their days in
the same spot, expending as little energy as possible, feeding
robotically off the current's figurative conveyor belt, the hatchery
trout he showed were spastic, clumsy and without any clue as
to the stream's generations old hierarchy."
Bachman's footage showed just
how inferior hatchery mongrels are to the real McCoy. They had
ratty tails. One was missing an eyeball. "They came off
as less-fish than-human-engineered pieces of meat which, if fact,
is their design . . . Bachman's data showed that most of the
hatchery trout in his study were dead within three months. None
survived the winter.
"The disturbing data,
from his perspective, is that 12 percent of wild trout in the
study area also died after he introduced hatchery fish; a fact
directly attributable, in his opinion, to increased stress."
"I don't see any way you
can put hatchery trout into a wild trout stream without doing
a great deal of harm. Period," Bachman told Vermont TU members.
On an aesthetic level, stocking
hatchery trout into a wild trout stream ends up changing the
stream's very character, killing its wildness and placing it
into another category, that of a tamed waterway.
Fish and Boat's "rationale
for stocking over wild trout is that anglers, sportsmen's clubs
and local businesses demand it," Undercoffer told me. "According
to the PFBC, stocking was resumed in Young Woman's Creek and
Cross Fork (both have substantial native brook trout and wild
brown trout populations) in order to satisfy social demands.
"I don't know if the PFBC
has ever taken specific steps, like buying land to protect a
wild brookie stream."
Ironically, depending on one's
perspective, the Pennsylvania Game Commission owns far more stream
mileage with wild brook trout populations than does the PFBC,
"which must be telling us something," Undercoffer says.
Some follow-on thoughts:
Pennsylvania has plenty of
put-and-take water suitable for stocking.
Hatcheries, including Pennsylvania's,
produce effluent, a pollutant.
Fish and Boat is supposed to
manage the state's fisheries on behalf of all of its citizens,
not just those who buy licenses.
Giving the agency general tax
revenue, like a small percentage of the state's sales tax, is
not only appropriate but of paramount importance if we are to
save even the best remaining wild brook trout populations.
Removing the connection between
growing hatchery mongrels and selling licenses would be a positive
step.
"What we need are more
wild trout in more wild rivers," the New York Times's editorial
page stated in June.
Catching a wild fish, then
releasing it back into its home water, is an experience unlike
any other in angling.
Plucking a hatchery-raised
fish that grew up in a concrete tank on a diet of trout pellets
is akin to handling a wan spirit.
Alan Gregory writes from Pennsylvania, where he
pens conservation columns for the daily Standard-Speaker in Hazleton.
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