Wyoming Fishing License

Enviros 'helped' wolf lose protection

Augusta, Mont. - In September 1995, I worked on a trail-building crew along the edge of Little Blackfoot Meadows, in the Helena National Forest near Elliston, Mont.

It was a big piece of roadless country, mostly lodgepole pines over a lush carpet of whortleberry bushes. The meadows were a sunburnt dun color, and the willows along the braids of the marshy creek glowed deep yellow from frost. In the center of a wide meadow, we noticed what I first thought was a small herd of horses. As the animals moved, their leggy, preposterous gait revealed them to be moose, huddled together, their long heads up and watching. We wondered why they were all bunched up like that. That night, the weather shifted, and the next morning, on a bench above the meadows, two sets of big dog-like tracks showed in the skiff of snow.

"Wolves," my boss said. "That's why those moose were acting like they were." I had never seen wolf tracks before. Kneeling to study them, I imagined the pair of wild rovers - from who knows where, maybe Canada or Glacier National Park - following ancient paths through the people-less valley. I liked being where the wolves were, in a place where so many of the region's original living components survived. We all did.

No one could have predicted back then that the Northern Rockies wolves - the 66 introduced into central Idaho and Yellowstone Park by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995 and 1996, plus a few that crossed the Canadian border and naturally re-colonized - would become one of the most successful projects of the Endangered Species Act. Wolves were among the first species sheltered by the 1973 law, and in the years since the reintroduction, their numbers have risen to more than five times the initial goal of 300 individuals and 30 breeding pairs. The success of the reintroduction has made for some excellent, fractious politics. It's also revealed the weaknesses in the strategy of the environmentalists who have used continuous lawsuits to protect wolves.

Going to court

From the beginning, it was clear that the resurgent wolf population would need at least the threat of legal action to survive. Many of the West's cattle and sheep ranchers and hunters still hail the extermination of the region's original wolves (the last were slaughtered in a Yellowstone den in 1926) as the best way to deal with top-level predators that compete with human beings. Yet the pro-wolf lawsuits have ended in a colossal strategic failure: Congress has just brushed them aside and passed a bipartisan measure that strips Endangered Species Act protections from most northern Rockies wolves, effective May 5. Suddenly, the whole Endangered Species Act looks vulnerable to more attacks from the law's traditional enemies as well as a surge of new ones. There are lessons we can pull from the apparent ruins.

Hatcheries, Fish Kills, and Local (vs. non-local) Media

Nice title for my first Chi Wulff Post, right?

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on introductions. In short: I’m the new guy. If you are interested in background info, check out the old blog . But 150,000 trout died in Wyoming last week at a hatchery less than three hours from the Recently Opened Official Chi Wulff Idaho Field Office (my basement). We can’t ignore that in favor of a ‘get-to-know-the-new-guy’ post.

This story first came to my attention via that all-consuming news source twitter. The official TU (Trout Unlimited, not Tom Chandler ) twitter feed linked to an article from the news conglomerate Reuters.

It seems that a power outage at Jackson National Fish Hatchery led to the early demise of 150,000 Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat. This was news, sure. But I couldn’t help but wonder why Reuters was interested in a fish kill at a hatchery out in Wyoming? Was this bigger news than I thought?

Reuters seems to think so. They’ve spun the story as a catastrophe for the South Fork of the Snake River, one of the local trophy waters near in my corner of the world. Panic for the local fly shops, right?

Consider this quote from the Reuters story before we move on:

The vast majority of the fish are stocked in Palisades Reservoir in Idaho, where many swim through the dam to downstream reaches of the South Fork Snake River, which flows through northwestern Wyoming and southeastern Idaho.

The fish die-off comes at a key time for communities and businesses that in the summer rely on the South Fork Snake River to flood the region with tourists and anglers lured by pristine waters brimming with trophy trout.

In a corridor lined with cottonwood trees, the river winds through forested mountains before dropping into sheer canyon lands carved through volcanic rock.

The depleted supply of the cherished trout may lower sales of fishing licenses in the two states.

Judge that particular passage how you will.

A quick Google search uncovered a second story, from a local source . Some of the particulars in the Reuters story were confirmed (fish did die), but the tone of impending doom was missing, especially in the discussion with the hatchery manager.

One thing that seems fishy (sorry) is the idea that the fine-spotted cutts planted in Palisades make up a major portion of the fish in the South Fork below the dam. According to Trout Unlimited (remember, the guys who linked to the Reuters article?), the cutthroat below the dam—the ones they are trying to protect—are Yellowstone cutts, not fine-spotted. The river also contains those pesky rainbows (which are hybridizing with the cutthroat and ruining the native gene pool) and brown trout. The river’s trout (all three species) are sustained through natural reproduction, not stocking of the lake above the dam, at least as far as I understand it. So there are three major trout populations below the dam and none of them are hatchery-bred fine-spotted cutts. Maybe that impending doom for the communities that allegedly rely on all those hatchery fish is not so impending.

Flyfisher's Guide to Wyoming, Including Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

Moon Handbooks Wyoming

Moon Montana, Wyoming & Idaho Camping, Including Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks

Frommer's Montana & Wyoming

Fodor's Montana & Wyoming, With the South Dakota Black Hills