Work will begin next week on a project aimed at restoring westslope cutthroat trout to the northwest corner of Yellowstone National Park.
Park officials on Monday released a formal approval of the project that will involve poisoning and clearing more than 2,000 fish, building a stream barrier and stocking a lake and nearby streams with genetically pure westslope trout.
The work along the East Fork of Specimen Creek is the best chance to return native westslope trout to Yellowstone, according to park officials.
Westslope were once the most abundant and widespread of the cutthroat subspecies in the West. But over time, as they lost habitat to human development and hybridized with other fish, pure strains of the westslope faded.
The same was true in Yellowstone, where the population fell dramatically as park managers stocked waters with nonnative fish during the first part of the 20th century. In 1937, about 16,000 Yellowstone cutthroat were placed into High Lake, near Specimen Creek. The fish moved downstream and hybridized with the westslope.
The latest project will mean building a barrier in the creek to keep nonnative fish out of the stream and applying a fish poison three times over two years to remove hybridized fish from the East Fork of Specimen Creek and High Lake.
Once the fish are killed and removed, park officials will replace them with westslope trout. The trout will come from a previously unknown, genetically pure westslope population found last summer on the western edge of Yellowstone.
An environmental assessment of the project was released for public review in May. Park officials signed a "finding of no significant impact" for the project late last week, allowing it to proceed.
Park officials are hoping that, if the restoration project is successful, it will provide anglers with good fishing along the remote stream in the coming years.
Published on Tuesday, July 11, 2006. Last modified on 7/11/2006 at 12:51 am
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