Yellowstone spending $2 million a year to kill lake trout

The introduction of lake trout in Yellowstone National Park devastated their native fishery as well as lots of birds and wildlife. The park is now spending $2 million a year in an effort to rid Yellowstone Lake of lake trout.

Their rules now require lake trout to be killed. It is illegal to release them alive.

And here’s the conclusion to the story:

But for an angler standing by a stream and casting out a line, the thought that rises helplessly to mind is that every species we lose, every habitat we compromise in the name of “human convenience,” is one more piece of the American character and of our own souls inadvertently washed away into oblivion.

Here’s the sad story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/opinion/fishing-species-extinction-yellowstone.html

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.