Bad Science: Culling Wild Native Fish to Prop-Up Nonnative Fish
Moosehead Lake in Maine, the largest viable wild native brook trout water wholly in the United States.
“We need to harvest around 3,000 lake trout under 18 inches to keep that population in check and to maintain our forage base (smelt). … We are encouraging anglers to harvest their limit of smaller lake trout for the remainder of the winter.”
NFC Executive Director Bob Mallard challenges the powers that be in regard to culling wild native lake trout to reduce pressure on nonnative and highly invasive smelts which serve as the primary forage for stocked nonnative landlocked salmon.
Smelt were introduced to feed the stocked nonnative landlocked salmon, neither of which have fared well in the lake for decades now. In turn, the smelt crashed the native lake whitefish population which deprived the wild native lake trout of the primary forage. And they compete with the wild native brook trout.
There are clearly too many mouths to feed in Moosehead Lake. The questions is, which ones should we focus our removal efforts on. Isn’t it more biologically and ecologically sound to suspend nonnative stocking before culling wild native fish?
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“While we hold a tournament to remove 3,000 wild native lake trout from Moosehead each winter, we stock 5,000 nonnative landlocked salmon a few months later each spring.”