In the western United States, the ability of non‐native lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) to attain large sizes, > 18 kg under favorable conditions, fueled the popularity of lake trout fisheries. In the past, restrictive regulations were adopted to increase lake trout abundance and produce trophy specimens. More recently, lake trout have become increasingly problematic because they prey upon and potentially compete with native and sport fishes. We review the experiences of agencies in seven western states which are considering or implementing strategies to address lake trout impacts despite management difficulties due to mixed public perception about lake trout's complex interactions with native or introduced fauna. Special regulations protecting lake trout have often been liberalized or rescinded to encourage their harvest and reduce their negative effects. More intensive methods to control or reduce lake trout abundance include promoting or requiring lake trout harvest, commercial‐scale netting, disrupting spawning, and stocking sterile lake trout.
Early footsteps in the Americas
Despite a plethora of archaeological research over the past century, the timing of human migration into the Americas is still far from resolved. In a study of exposed outcrops of Lake Otero in White Sands National Park in New Mexico, Bennett
et al
. reveal numerous human footprints dating to about 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. These finds indicate the presence of humans in North America for approximately two millennia during the Last Glacial Maximum south of the migratory barrier created by the ice sheets to the north. This timing coincided with a Northern Hemispheric abrupt warming event, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2, which drew down lake levels and allowed humans and megafauna to walk on newly exposed surfaces, creating tracks that became preserved in the geologic record. —AMS
SynopsisThe completion in the fall of 1984 of Taylor Draw Dam on the White River, Colorado, formed Kenney Reservoir -thus impounding the last significant free-flowing tributary in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Fishes were sampled above and below the dam axis prior to closure of the dam and in the reservoir and river downstream following impoundment. While immediate effects of the dam to the ichthyofauna included blockage of upstream migration to 80 km of documented range for endangered Colorado squawfish, the reservoir also proved to have profound delayed effects on the river's species composition. Pre-impoundment investigations in 1983-1984 showed strong domination by native species above, within, and below the reservoir basin. By 1989-1990, non-native species comprised roughly 90% of the fishes collected in the reservoir and 80% of the fishes collected in the river below the dam. Initially, fathead minnow, whose numbers quickly increased in the new reservoir, dominated all post-impoundment collections, but red shiner became the most abundant fish collected in the river below the dam by [1989][1990]. While agency stocking programs for the reservoir sought to emphasize a sport fishery for salmonids, primarily rainbow trout, local enthusiasm for warmwater sport fishes resulted in illicit transfers of these species from nearby impoundments. Several species, formerly rare or unreported in the White River in Colorado, including white sucker, northern pike, green sunfish, bluegill, largemouth bass and black crappie, were present in the river following impoundment. Our investigation indicates smaller-scale, main-stem impoundments that do not radically alter hydrologic or thermal regimes can still have a profound influence on native ichthyofauna by facilitating establishment and proliferation of nonnative species.
228
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.