Knapweed and leafy spurge don't have many fans in these parts. Nobody makes the drive from Texas to pose with them and post the photos on Instagram. Invasive species aren't usually something to celebrate, because they can wreak havoc on native ecosystems in ways impossible to undo. But other invaders have gotten a much warmer welcome. One listener wonders why some non-native species – like brown trout and rainbows – are so valued in Montana.
Austin Amestoy: Welcome to the Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I’m your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We’ll answer your questions – large or small – about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans for Montana, this is The Big Why.
Austin Amestoy: Today, I’m here with producer Nick Mott
Nick Mott: Hey Austin! It seems like our listeners are endlessly curious about wildlife, and this time a listener in Jefferson County noticed something fishy.
Austin Amestoy: What were they curious about?
Nick Mott: Well, I’m starting the story here. This is the beautiful, clear bubbling headwaters of Big Springs Creek, outside of Lewistown. And it’s also the largest coldwater trout hatchery in the state. Here, Montana hatches millions of trout. The thing is, the trout hatched here generally aren’t only native species – things like cutthroat trout. Instead, they also hatch fish like rainbows and browns.
Austin Amestoy: Sure, Montana rivers are known for rainbows and brown trout. I actually did a couple stories earlier this year about trout being raised down in some Bitterroot Valley classrooms.
Nick Mott: Well, even though anglers love to catch them, and FWP hatches them, rainbows and browns are actually not native to Montana. Our listener wants to know: Why do we value non-native fish like rainbows and browns so much in the state?
Austin Amestoy: Wow, I actually didn’t know those rainbows weren’t part of our native ecosystems back when the kids were releasing them into a pond near Hamilton. How’d they get here in the first place?
Nick Mott: Let’s rewind about 150 years. To 1889, in fact.
Austin Amestoy: That’s the same year Montana became a state!
Nick Mott: Exactly. At the time, fish like Yellowstone and westslope cutthroat, bull trout, and Arctic grayling swam our streams. Native fish. But then, something monumental happened. And to tell you about what that was, we have two guides for this fishing story.
Adam Strainer: I’m Adam Strainer. I'm the Fisheries Division Administrator, AKA the fish chief for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks here in Helena.
Patrick Byorth: I'm Patrick Byorth. I am the Montana Water Director for Trout Unlimited.
Austin Amestoy: A fish chief and a water director, they seem like the go-to guys for this question. What happens in 1889?
Nick Mott: Well, it’s the dawn of a whole era. That year the very first rainbows and brown trout were plopped down into streams in the area, in Yellowstone National Park.
Adam Strainer: it was more of a Johnny Appleseed approach in the very beginning.
Nick Mott: For decades that followed, fish introduction became the name of the game. There were fish trains.
Adam Strainer: Bring your bucket of fish on the train and we'll stop at every stream along the way and pour some fish into those streams.
Nick Mott: Fish from across the country and the globe were getting moved around and placed into waterways where they’d never before been present.
Patrick Byorth: They'd trade species, so we'd end up getting browns from Scotland and Germany, rainbows from the McLeod River down in California. And we exchanged grayling in return and distributed grayling out across the world, and cutthroat too.
Adam Strainer: I mean, it was very rudimentary. It was very simple, but in the end, very effective.
Austin Amestoy: Huh, so people started introducing fish, by the bucketload into our rivers and streams. Why did they do that in the first place?
Nick Mott: One reason is just familiarity. It’s what people were used to fishing for out east. Fish like brown trout also make for a really fun fight. At the same time, this was an era of all kinds of resource exploitation – logging and mining and the like – so as ecosystems were destroyed, stocking rivers was a way to make sure there were still fish left to catch.
Patrick Byorth: They thought, well, we could just stock our way to maintain our fisheries and make these fisheries better. 'I love yellow perch. I'm gonna bring perch in.' 'I love bass. I'm going to bring bass in.'
Nick Mott: This goes on for decades. And as it does, rainbows and browns do really well. So this is really step one that puts us on the trajectory to the fish predicament our listener noticed. But, Austin, the story takes a turn in the mid-1970s.
Austin Amestoy: As so many things seem to do, Nick. Tell me more.
Nick Mott: By this time, rainbows and browns had become properly wild in many of our rivers – they were breeding and self-sustaining. But then along comes this young fish biologist fresh out of grad school. A guy named Dick Vincent. He started looking at the impacts of stocking on wild trout.
Patrick Byorth: And Dick Vincent discovered that adding more hatchery fish into a system actually suppressed the trout population. So Montana made this bold decision at a bold time in Montana history to stop stocking streams.
Nick Mott: This was not a universally popular idea. Emotions ran hot.
Patrick Byorth: A lot of people feared that if you stop stocking, all our fisheries will die off.
Nick Mott: Somebody even sabotaged Vincent’s trailer after a public meeting in Ennis.
Austin Amestoy: But this still went into effect, right?
Nick Mott: Yep, even today, Montana only stocks places like reservoirs or alpine lakes with rainbows and browns. The trout in the Clark Fork near you or the Yellowstone near me – those are wild fish that migrate and reproduce on their own. Those trout hatched at Big Springs Creek I started with? They go to about 100 waterways across the state – but think, lakes and ponds, mostly.
Austin Amestoy: With this complexity, I’m guessing this means that today, not everything’s hunky-dory under the water?
Nick Mott: By no means at all.
Adam Strainer: Non-native species pretty much have taken over large portions of historic native ranges of trout.
Nick Mott: Fish like pike and bass are invasive, and they’ve taken over big chunks of water, too. There are very specific threats, as well. Rainbows, for example, hybridize with cutthroats, diluting the gene pool. And today, native fish like cutthroats and bull trout are facing challenges that continue to mount.
Patrick Byorth: I know it's an unpopular thing to say, but it's the climate change that's happening.
Nick Mott: Cutties and bull trout are very temperature sensitive. So as water warms, they lose habitat. Rainbows and browns – they can handle wider temperature windows. As we keep seeing more hot summers, hot water, and things like hoot-owl closures, Byorth wonders:
Patrick Byorth: How far up the mountain can they get before they run out of habitat?
Austin Amestoy: A powerful question for the future of our trout populations. But back to rainbows and browns – it sounds like FWP has kind of accepted that they’re just a reality now. Is that right?
Nick Mott: That exactly right.
Adam Strainer: Unfortunately, a lot of them, once they're in a system, they're nearly impossible to remove from the system.
Nick Mott: Navigating this tension between natives and beloved introduced fish is a balancing act FWP confronts head-on.
Adam Strainer: That's one of the biggest challenges that Fish, Wildlife and Parks faces in the state of Montana.
Austin Amestoy: So, are there other reasons we seem to place a lot of value on non-natives like rainbows and browns in Montana?
Nick Mott: Well, the elephant in the room here is the economy.
Adam Strainer: Angling in Montana is worth $1.27 billion.
Nick Mott: That’s billion, with a "b," Austin.
Adam Strainer: And the vast majority of that – folks come to Montana to fish for rainbows and browns. That's what people come to the state of Montana for.
Austin Amestoy: So how does the state manage for both natives and these popular non-natives?
Nick Mott: Over the decades, there’s been a serious focus on improving habitat. That means reversing some of the damages of, say, historic mining. It means reconnecting drainages and getting more cold water into streams. This is stuff that makes things better for cutthroats, rainbows, and browns alike.
Patrick Byorth: It's not a zero-sum game. It's not either cutthroat or rainbow.
Nick Mott: There have also been efforts focused specifically on reestablishing populations of cutthroats. In fact, the state is working on a brand new management strategy for westslope cutthroat trout in particular. Instead of managing populations drainage by drainage, they’re zooming out with a new management strategy that will take a holistic approach to the native fish.
Adam Strainer: We really hang our hat on Montana's fisheries being the pinnacle of angling in the West because of our wild trout management and strategies.
Austin Amestoy: So it’s not all bad news when it comes to fish, then!
Nick Mott: Exactly, Austin. Byorth says the rivers today are certainly busier than decades ago, but –
Patrick Byorth: The good old days are actually probably not much better, or maybe even a little worse than the present times in Montana fisheries.
Austin Amestoy: Thanks so much, Nick.
Nick Mott: Of course, Austin.
Austin Amestoy: Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana. Submit your questions below, or leave a message at 406-640-8933. Let's see what we can discover together! Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and help others find the show by sharing it and leaving a review.
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