Comments about ‘Shrinking number of native fish is bad sign’

the streams that the BLM has taken and poisoned used to be some of the most wonderful fishing streams an angler ever set foot on. Now there is nothing to catch. They supposedly planted those rare Bonneville cutthroat trout. one stream in particular was "restored" 15 years ago still void of decent fishing. Why would any angler want to take a stream full of browns, rainbows that the kids love to fish and poison them all. Doesn't make any sense, fishing license fees keep going up and lovely streams one by one are being taken out of service.

Because you can go anywhere and catch stocked trout, but there are very few places left for the native trout. Why can't we leave a few places for the fish that belong here, instead of managing streams just for our own selfish recreational pleasure?

The "canary" analogy is a very poor one. Just because brook trout can outcompete cutthroat is no sign that something is wrong with the water; it just means that brook trout are able to outcompete the cutthroat. As a matter of fact, it may well be that brook trout need conditions that are more pristine than cutthroat trout do. We don't know that, but it may be true. Surely, the brook trout do not degrade the streams. Just because a species existed when the white man arrived doesn't mean it is intrinsically better than one that was introduced or arrived later. Organisms adapt to changes in the environment and always have. Man is part of that environment, not an outside enemy of it. Once a species arrives, by any means, it is tampering to remove it just like it is tampering to let it survive on its own if it can.

I love fish also but I'd ten times sooner catch a Rainbow or German Brown than a Cutthroat of equal size. Many of those 'bows or browns may have been planted to begin with but in some streams they have long since become wild. Some fisheries are flat being ruined by attempts to "go native".