Public input sought on future of cutthroat trout

Posted 2/1/18

The Cody meeting was billed as a conversation with concerned citizens about the department’s conservation efforts for Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

“This is truly the beginning of a conversation. We are starting tonight. We want your help in …

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Public input sought on future of cutthroat trout

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Local Wyoming Game and Fish Department fisheries managers brought out the big guns for a meeting with the public Monday — including hiring professional facilitator Tara Kuipers to run the meeting and bringing up department director Scott Talbott from Cheyenne.

The Cody meeting was billed as a conversation with concerned citizens about the department’s conservation efforts for Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

“This is truly the beginning of a conversation. We are starting tonight. We want your help in identifying where we’re going to go next,” Kuipers said in guiding the meeting.

Yet at times it seemed more like the Game and Fish extending an olive branch.

“We can do better. We can do better serving the people who are the owners of [the state’s] wildlife. That’s what tonight is about. It’s about going back to what we really need to be doing as an agency. We need to find balance between serving wildlife and serving [the public],” said Sam Hochhalter, Wyoming Game and Fish Department Cody Region fisheries supervisor.

In introducing the meeting, Talbott pointed to many of the department’s successes, such as with managing beaver, elk and antelope.

“They are part of the incredible success stories that we have in our past,” Talbott said. “We’re pretty good biologists. But we need your help on [serving the public]. That’s what we call the art of wildlife management: The science is often fairly easy; the art is much more difficult.”

Talbott has been pushing for communication with the state’s residents in many topics. The meeting, at Grizzly Hall in the Park County Library, was similar to recent grizzly bear and mule deer meetings. It started with a plea for public engagement, separated into small discussion groups and then came together to share some of the common themes through the groups.

About 70 participants showed up, many from groups like the East Yellowstone Chapter of Trout Unlimited or the Cody Anglers Group. Others in attendance included Park County commissioners Lee Livingston and Joe Tilden. For the most part, the crowd was eager to be part of future solutions. But there was still some animosity in the crowd.

“We need to learn from our mistakes,” said Kirk Bollinger, dressed in a shirt displaying the Wyoming flag and sitting near the front row.

The lack of communication on past projects resulted in bad blood between some in the public and fisheries managers and included complaints up the chain as high as Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.

“We’ve been involved in cutthroat restoration for decades. We’ve done a lot of positive things,” Hochhalter said. “It didn’t work for Porcupine Creek and it didn’t work for Eagle Creek.”

In searching for new habitat for cutthroats, fisheries managers previously suggested stocking the native species above waterfalls in Porcupine Creek in the Bighorn Mountains and Eagle Creek in the North Fork area; the falls would have served as natural barriers where the species could exist without competition with other trout. The efforts of fisheries managers changed 15 years ago, Hochhalter said, when they began looking at existing populations and at new drainages — places where new populations could be established without competition.

“Putting new populations on the landscape is an important part of our efforts,” Hochhalter said. “We’re losing our pure lines of cutthroats due to hybridization.”

Cutthroat trout have been crossing with rainbows, a non-native species, called cutbows. They also compete for habitat with German brown trout and brook trout.

When the Game and Fish devised the Eagle and Porcupine creek plans, a lack of communication led to complaints. Most people want cutthroat conservation, but not if it affects the fishing in their backyard, Hochhalter said. Brook trout is a non-native species, but is popular because it’s easy to catch and the daily limit is more than five times higher than cutthroats. Brook trout have more than 2,000 river-miles of habitat in the Big Horn Basin, but cutthroats have less than 200 river-miles of habitat where they don’t compete with non-native species.

The combination of lack of habitat and competition with non-native species are problematic for fisheries managers wanting to keep the management of cutthroats in-state.

“What’s the driving force behind this effort? Is it fear of repercussions from the Endangered Species Act [ESA] or is it actually the Game and Fish following through on their charge of management of all wildlife species?” asked Commissioner Tilden.

Talbott admits the listing of the cutthroat on the ESA is a threat.

“We’ve had multiple petitions to list cutthroat trout as an endangered species. If that happens, it will change our communities, it will change our culture,” the director said in an interview after his presentation.

Many in the room were ready to move on, excited to be included in the process from this point forward. Several mentioned serious consideration of expanded catch and release areas and increased enforcement of the regulations. Others cited water quality issues and the need to educate the public about conservation issues. The lists inked during small group discussions will be consolidated and presented at a later date.

The department has been working on several projects to save the cutthroat — including recent efforts after the illegal stocking of walleye in the Buffalo Bill Reservoir — and is also working with private landowners and organization partners like Trout Unlimited.

But the department’s job extends beyond the cutthroat.

“It’s our responsibility to conserve all aquatic wildlife, including all native species — a lot of you probably haven’t heard of, like sturgeon chub in the Bighorn River … or Mountain Suckers in the Clarks Fork drainage. There are a lot of species out there and we have a responsibility to ensure they’re around today and down the road for future generations,” Hochhalter said.

The Game and Fish will announce the next installment in the “working group” series soon, tentatively scheduled for mid- to late February.

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