Michigan Grayling Restoration: limiting factors are invasive brown/brook trout and politics, not climate change necessarily

[Fish Sticks]

“But tribal resource managers believe such interventions should be on the table if needed. They argue that Michigan has plenty of brown trout streams to justify managing a handful of river reaches specifically for Grayling.

“We're not out there wanting to just completely get rid of any species that is not native,” said Fessell, of the Grand Traverse Band. But there may be scenarios, he said, “where there’s going to have to be some management of brown trout.”


Fascinating article apparently invasive brown and invasive brook trout in in that area of michigan are the biggest remaining issues for grayling reintroduction in the lower upper peninsula in michigan.

Michigan aims to revive Arctic grayling. But first, where to put them? | Bridge Michigan

Nearly a century after logging and fishing practices wiped out Arctic grayling, state and tribal leaders are scouting northern streams where they can thrive. The must-haves: cold water, plenty of shade, and trout anglers who won’t be hostile to their return.

www.bridgemi.com

 

[Fish Sticks]

I’m sure all those anglers opposing reintroductions are self identified “conservationists”.

You hear people that say what ever is good for fishing is good for conservation and that fishing and conservation are the same thing. Its sad and obviously false.

 

[Silent Ocelot]

I'm starting to see a pattern here...

 

[tomgamber]

just now?

 

[Fish Sticks]

just now?

case and point of the article^

 

[troutbert]

I’m sure all those anglers opposing reintroductions are self identified “conservationists”.

So "conservationists" is a bad term now, in addition to "wild trout?"

Are there more? Do you have a whole list?

 

[jifigz]

The article was very "meh" as most articles in any paper or magazine or other publishing venue are. It's cool to reintroduce natives to an environment and there is ALWAYS pushback against EVERYTHING. The article didn't seem to be overly biased in either direction...just fact driven and that's good.

It'd be neat to see a small scale reintroduction and see how it goes. I've never once heard anyone assume fishing is conservation and vice versa. Dollars generated by fishing help fund conservation, that's true.

I'd say most fisherman are actually the opposite of conservationists. They use and abuse resources and want more.

 

[Fish Sticks]

So "conservationists" is a bad term now, in addition to "wild trout?"

Are there more? Do you have a whole list?

You tell me, the folks blocking that reintroduction, are they doing conservation?

 

[Fish Sticks]

The article was very "meh" as most articles in any paper or magazine or other publishing venue are. It's cool to reintroduce natives to an environment and there is ALWAYS pushback against EVERYTHING. The article didn't seem to be overly biased in either direction...just fact driven and that's good.

It'd be neat to see a small scale reintroduction and see how it goes. I've never once heard anyone assume fishing is conservation and vice versa. Dollars generated by fishing help fund conservation, that's true.

I'd say most fisherman are actually the opposite of conservationists. They use and abuse resources and want more.

Kirk Deeter has been on a tear recently saying fishing and conservation are the same thing🤦 thats the only reason why i mentioned that. Yea I would tend to agree with your last statement and that abuse can look very different depending on the situation. However, not to say anglers don’t take part in good conservationat times I think there is just ALOT of confusion about what that is . Schuyllkill county headwaters doing vibert egg boxes with brown trout in brook trout streams(lauded as conservation🤮) mountain creek trout club raising money for nee hatchery, website says conservation🤮. these guys in article blocking the grayling restoration worried will take the focus of rainbow trout and brown trout “conservation”.

Yea I agree a small scale reintroduction would be very exciting to see especially if it makes grayling no longer extirpated from michigan.

 

[Fish Sticks]

So "conservationists" is a bad term now, in addition to "wild trout?"

Are there more? Do you have a whole list?

and if you truly want to have native brook trout you tell me if managing for “wild trout” is going to get us there. Its easy to be snarky harder to face the truth.

 

[jifigz]

Who is Kirk Deeter? I am sure I could Google it and find out but......

Sometimes it is necessary to approach things with an unparalleled level of zeal......but......

I never knew the word "conserve" only pertained to native species. How about that? What is it called if you are trying to preserve a nonnative species? Management? And to address your point in post #8, yes, the people blocking a reintroduction are doing conservation (in my opinion).....they are just not conserving the species that you want them to conserve. By all definitions that I could find in the dictionary, they are still practicing conservation.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5199817.pdf

That link takes you to a report written about the brown trout in the Gunnison National Forest and there is even a chapter on "conservation of brown trout." If you search you can find many plans for the conservation of brown trout in areas where they are not native. I understand you want to conserve native plants and animals but...

Now you can tell me why and how I am wrong so I can read it, evaluate, and continue to gain additional viewpoints.

 

[Fish Sticks]

Who is Kirk Deeter? I am sure I could Google it and find out but......

Sometimes it is necessary to approach things with an unparalleled level of zeal......but......

I never knew the word "conserve" only pertained to native species. How about that? What is it called if you are trying to preserve a nonnative species? Management? And to address your point in post #8, yes, the people blocking a reintroduction are doing conservation (in my opinion).....they are just not conserving the species that you want them to conserve. By all definitions that I could find in the dictionary, they are still practicing conservation.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5199817.pdf

That link takes you to a report written about the brown trout in the Gunnison National Forest and there is even a chapter on "conservation of brown trout." If you search you can find many plans for the conservation of brown trout in areas where they are not native. I understand you want to conserve native plants and animals but...

Now you can tell me why and how I am wrong so I can read it, evaluate, and continue to gain additional viewpoints.

So I am glad you brought that up. Conservation is aimed at species preservation and ecosystem health/biodiversity/stability(all three essentially synonymous with each other ).

Brown trout have invaded nearly 100% of their suitable ranges as per Macintosh et al in 2011(not all streams though,thank god).
So they do not have a conservation need outside of their native range.

Invasive brown trout have decreased biodiversity/ecosystem health all around the world. In colorado, protecting them would decrease the biodiversity/ecosystem health overall (documented declines in native trout, sculpin, amphibians, and more out west. Basically “conservation” of an invasive species is not possible because your destroying something else in the process and giving a boost to something already damaging ecosystem.

Basically if something harms ecosystem health or fuels extirpations and extinctions its not conservation.

 

[jifigz]

I never said that brown trout have a conservation need in the majority of their range. I just stated what I feel conservation is (from the basic definition of the word) and pointed to a US federal agency that had a "conservation plan" in place for a non-native fish on federal land. We can conserve all sorts of stuff, things, and species and there will always be a benefit to one thing and the negative to some other thing. I acknowledge the brown trout's negative impact on certain aspects of the environment.

Alright, goodbye and see ya later.

 

[Fish Sticks]

I never said that brown trout have a conservation need in the majority of their range. I just stated what I feel conservation is (from the basic definition of the word) and pointed to a US federal agency that had a "conservation plan" in place for a non-native fish on federal land. We can conserve all sorts of stuff, things, and species and there will always be a benefit to one thing and the negative to some other thing. I acknowledge the brown trout's negative impact on certain aspects of the environment.

Alright, goodbye and see ya later.

Federal agencies promoting non native fish on federal land is just like the entities I previously mentioned calling producing them in hatcheries or vibert egg boxes conservation. Net loss for that ecosystem.

I get that you are really focusing on conservation as far as its range of applications. Conserving energy/mass, conserving rations, conserving money and ect.

But when someone says their a conservationist that has a different implied meaning than simply conserving one quantitive measurable. It has an implied benefit to ecosystems or nature itself. I get trying to distill that down to possible other applications of the word conserve to display the range it can be applies to. However, when it comes to conservation we are talking about it in the context its used in the field of species conservation not physics or finances.

 

[jifigz]

No, I mean yes, but, no. I am talking about species and plants in relation to the simplistic definition of the word. Like, for instance, Penns Creek. It will NEVER be brook trout again. Ever. Period. So does that mean that you don't take "conservation" steps to protect the brown trout of that stream? And so like I asked before and you didn't address, is that called "management" instead? If something was threatening Penns and the brown trout population was highly at risk of collapse, would you argue that no human intervention should take place to attempt to save those fish and that system since they are non-native? And if we implemented strategies to save that species it is not conservation?

At what point do you embrace and protect what you have if there is never any going back to the "old way." After all, if it wasn't for those invasive human beings none of these changes would have yet to occur......dang us.

 

[Fish Sticks]

No, I mean yes, but, no. I am talking about species and plants in relation to the simplistic definition of the word. Like, for instance, Penns Creek. It will NEVER be brook trout again. Ever. Period. So does that mean that you don't take "conservation" steps to protect the brown trout of that stream? And so like I asked before and you didn't address, is that called "management" instead? If something was threatening Penns and the brown trout population was highly at risk of collapse, would you argue that no human intervention should take place to attempt to save those fish and that system since they are non-native? And if we implemented strategies to save that species it is not conservation?

At what point do you embrace and protect what you have if there is never any going back to the "old way." After all, if it wasn't for those invasive human beings none of these changes would have yet to occur......dang us.

So I am really glad we are having this conversation because I think this theoretical scenario you brought up serves as a case study of sorts that allows us to break it down a little more.

Scenario one: Pennsy creek and all its aquatic residents as a whole become at risk due to water quality, hydrology, or some other reason. And the focus of restoration is as much conservation or ecological lift as possible.

There would be two aspects to conservation in this scenario in my mind.

1.water quality conservation for downstream ecosystems(Susky/ Bay)

2. Species conservation for native fish that add to the biodiversity and stability of the penns aquatic creek ecosystem. Basically remediating threats to the things that strengthen and stabilize the foodweb/aquatic ecosystem would be conservation.

What happens to brown trout happens to brown trout in this scenario because removal in systems the size of penns is not possible. So its helpful to think about brown trout in this example as née zealand mud-snails, can’t take em all out so we educate the public they harm ecosystem’s and don’t put them in a bucket and spread them to new waterways.

I think its a good mental exercise to think about this example of a penns catastrophe with introduction of new zealand mudsnails instead of brown trout. If the mud-snails benefit from a reduction in pollution we would call that a consequence of restoration to save the other species not conservation.

Scenario 2: Pretend brown trout started just crashing in Penns Creek independently of wild native brook trout that also have a population in the main-stem, at least seasonally. Well we can pretend this scenario is happening or just fly to southwestern montana where brown trout really are crashing relative to other trout species right now.

So what we have is an invasive species crashing, possibly extirpating in the future.

How you would handle this scenario really depends on what people collectively feel the watershed should be used for. If its conservation you use it and allow it to benefit that aquatic ecosystem as the invasive species fizzles out.

If people feel like the goal of what the watershed should be used for is purely financial, tourism, and recreational reasons then fisheries managers put time, money, and effort into propping up the invasive species like in Montana or Michigan with the lake run rainbows. This would be ufor social reasons not conservation reasons.

 

[Fish Sticks]

What we have today in Penns Creek is a wild invasive brown trout fishery with large recreational, tourism and other social/financial draws.

We know complete brown trout removal is not feasible in Penns and that it has value to anglers because of its big brown trout.

However, we also have likely multiple populations of brook trout(a Metapopulation). They very much so deserves protection and I am curious to see what else could be done in Penns Creek for the increasing number of wild native brook trout found there instead of doing a full on removal project(which isn’t possible). Too bad we will never know with PAFB at the helm. At a minimum you could protect them there(slot limit sure won’t). At a maximum, if Pa fish and boat really cared(and they don’t based on their actions), you could find out what kind of life history strategy those brook trout are using and see if there is an actionable limiting factor/ bottleneck.

 

[Fish Sticks]

No, I mean yes, but, no. I am talking about species and plants in relation to the simplistic definition of the word. Like, for instance, Penns Creek. It will NEVER be brook trout again. Ever. Period. So does that mean that you don't take "conservation" steps to protect the brown trout of that stream? And so like I asked before and you didn't address, is that called "management" instead? If something was threatening Penns and the brown trout population was highly at risk of collapse, would you argue that no human intervention should take place to attempt to save those fish and that system since they are non-native? And if we implemented strategies to save that species it is not conservation?

At what point do you embrace and protect what you have if there is never any going back to the "old way." After all, if it wasn't for those invasive human beings none of these changes would have yet to occur......dang us.

We aren’t classified as invasive ironically according to the Smithsonian because we migrated here on our own. If someone had netted chris columbus leif erikson who ever got here first and put them in a huge bucket and dumped on north america i guess we’d be invasive species

 

[Silent Ocelot]

Big brain time;

I would say we as people who are not (originally) indigenous to the United States of America are invasive because we displaced and destroyed the native population of people that lived here. I would consider the initially colonizing ships very similar to the white trucks. You could actually use the colonization of the continental US as a metaphor for what has happened and is happening to native brook trout.

Not trying to start an argument just something I thought about when posting a sweet pro brookie meme on Columbus day.

It is fascinating to think that brook trout saw the advent of the native people of the continental US and saw them depart.

 

[silverfox]

Big brain time;

I would say we as people who are not (originally) indigenous to the United States of America are invasive because we displaced and destroyed the native population of people that lived here. I would consider the initially colonizing ships very similar to the white trucks. You could actually use the colonization of the continental US as a metaphor for what has happened and is happening to native brook trout.

Not trying to start an argument just something I thought about when posting a sweet pro brookie meme on Columbus day.

It is fascinating to think that brook trout saw the advent of the native people of the continental US and saw them depart.

The most significant difference between homo sapiens and introduced fish is the "introduced" part. We immigrated to this continent. Introduced species were brought here against their will.

So I have to say that we are not invasive species. We migrated of our own volition.