Havn't We Learned Anything?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Haviland SMITH
Date: June 1, 2006 11:28:11 AM EDT
To:
Subject: The Battenkill
Gentlemen,
I guess my problem with the issue of stocking rainbows, sterile or not, in
the Battenkill stems from my belief that the F&W folks long ago had
accepted that stocking hatchery trout in any stream that has good potential for
natural reproduction is a mistake. It happened when I was on the Board and
while Angelo Incerpi was the head fisheries biologist in the Department.
To refresh your memory, the decision was made that no trout would be stocked in
streams with good potential for natural reproduction. Hatchery reared trout
would only be placed in waters that had little to no such potential – like ponds,
lakes and sections of some specific streams and rivers like Otter Creek, the
Lamoille, the Black and the Winooski.
This was not some arbitrary decision. It was made on the basis of the best
science available at the time which told us, among other things, that hatchery
trout, having not been raised in wild streams and thus having no understanding
of nature’s pecking order, badly disrupt the feeding patterns of the native trout
in streams. This, in turn, further threatens the wild trout population which
must then waste far too much energy simply competing for food under new
circumstances in waters where life of any kind is precariously on the edge.
Virtually every other state that supported cold water trout fisheries at that
time, in the face of the same knowledge about hatchery trout behavior that
motivated us here in Vermont, had already implemented programs to protect waters
with natural reproduction potential by not stocking hatchery trout. Frankly,
we were among the last states to put that practice into effect.
Perhaps since my time there have been breakthroughs in our understanding of
hatchery trout behavior in wild rivers that put to rest my objections to this
plan, but I doubt it. I personally canvassed the F&W departments of every
cold water state in the country while I was on the Board and the only fisheries
biologists who disputed the findings were right here in Vermont! In the
end, even they came around.
The problem was then and is now that there are a lot of fishermen in Vermont
whose interest is solely in a stringer of trout to show off to their buddies.
That’s where the pressure comes from, but the real shame is on the
managers in the Department who bend to these pressure knowing that science
supporting this kind of stocking is non-existent.
The reason Vermonters took fish and game management out of the Legislature was
that they wanted it to be in the hands of professionals who would use the
soundest science in putting together their programs. When, as is clearly
the case now, the Department drops the science and goes for the politics, this
very important state resource is no better off than when it was being managed
by the Legislature.
And I thought we had learned!
Haviland Smith
Vermont Fish & Wildlife Board member 1989-1995
TU Life Member
PS: I had a "Guest Shot" in the March 1998 edition of Vermont Outdoors that far more comprehensively covered the issue of stocking hatchery trout.
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