Students at Seeley Lake Elementary School learned a harsh lesson in ecology this summer.
Back in May, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries biologists captured a 14-inch cutthroat trout at the base of Milltown Dam, where it was stymied in its attempt to return to spawn in its home waters upstream.
The cutthroat was implanted with a radio transmitter and transported above the dam.
At that time, the cutthroat was adopted by teacher Linda Bower's class at Seeley Lake in the Adopt-A-Trout educational program, sponsored by FWP, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Blackfoot Challenge conservation organization.
In the program, students from eight Blackfoot Valley schools adopted native cutthroats captured at Milltown Dam by FWP and implanted with radio transmitters. The students then monitored the upstream spawning migrations of the fish on a Web site (www.r6.fws.gov/pfw/montana/adopt.html) maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The cutthroat adopted by the Seeley Lake class was given the name Pollywog by the students. They followed Pollywog's upstream journey to Gold Creek, a Blackfoot River tributary near Potomac.
After spawning in Gold Creek, Pollywog moved back downstream into Milltown Reservoir, where the transmitter showed it remained for several days in the first week of July.
On July 14, Matt Ball of Missoula, who was fishing in the reservoir, caught a 2 1/4-pound northern pike with an antenna sticking out of its mouth. When Ball pulled on the antenna, a radio transmitter popped out of the pike's mouth.
Matt's father Joe Ball, a professor in the University of Montana Wildlife Research Deparment, recognized the device and told Matt to call FWP. The young angler informed FWP fisheries biologist David Schmetterling that he'd caught a tagged pike.
After some confusion, Schmetterling said, he realized that it wasn't a tagged pike that Matt caught, but a pike that had eaten a cutthroat that Schmetterling had implanted with a transmitter.
It was Pollywog.
"Many radio-tagged cutthroats and bull trout move down into the reservoir and stay there for awhile," Schmetterling said. "I have a feeling we might be tracking pike instead of the cutts and bull trout we thought we were.
"This elucidates the whole problem of the pike in the reservoir. We know they eat a lot of juvenile trout. But they are also even eating adult cutthroats and bull trout."
The adventures of Pollywog, including its sad demise, and Matt Ball's discovery, are fully documented on the Adopt-A-Trout Web site.
"Instead of Adopt-A-Trout," Matt Ball told Schmetterling, "they should call it the Feed-The-Pike program."
Ultimately, Schmetterling said, education is the long-term solution to illegal introductions of exotic species, such as the pike that have devastated native and game fisheries all over western Montana.
"It goes back to the Adopt-A-Trout program that gives students an appreciation of the unique resources we have," said Schmetterling. "And they understand how northern pike can impact other fish."
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)