NFC Executive Bob Mallard Talks IFW Peer Reviews With Bangor Daily News...
Earlier this year, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife published a proposal to stock Haymock Lake, a wild native lake trout and brook trout water that has not been stocked in 20 years. The intention is to stock lake trout to try to suppress illegally introduced nonnative smelts to take pressure off legally introduced nonnative lake whitefish.
Mallard blogged about the proposal on the NFC website and Facebook, as well as writing about it in the Bangor Daily News. Maine NFC formally opposed the proposal as well.
Several weeks later, MDIFW announced that they were going forward as planned with regard to stocking Haymock Lake, effectively removing it from State Heritage Fish designation in 2029, and setting the clock back 25 years. Again, Mallard blogged about it on the NFC website and Facebook, and wrote about it in the BDN.
“Input in regard to the Haymock Lake proposal varied radically from one review to the next. It ranged from, ‘Very well written and you have my full support!’ to a thoughtful 521-word response that included the following...””
Wanting to understand how this ill-advised and as likely to fail as not proposal got through the checks and balances that are supposedly in place at MDIFW, Mallard requested the respective peer review documents from DIF&W.
“Out of 13 peer review submissions, roughly half noted concerns with regard to the proposal.
Interestingly, many of these mirrored my own concerns, which I documented in my articles...”
What Mallard found was interesting to say the least, and in many ways mirrored his own concerns with regard to the proposal. And there were some things in the peer review documents that suprised even Bob…
“I have concerns about using hatchery LKT (lake trout). The original and likely native LKT [population] was never extirpated. I raise this concern because LKT (native pops) are also a [Species of Greatest Conservation Need] and I don’t think we want to potentially compromise one SGCN for another…especially in a situation where we know the [lake whitefish] population is not native...”