A Vampire Story

On the Poultney River-one of three large Vermont streams that desperately require TFM treatments-The Nature Conservancy has talked the state and feds into a five-year moratorium while everyone chats about non-chemical "alternatives" that don't exist. In the March FR&R, the editor described TNC as "arguably the world's most effective environmental organization." This is correct, and that's why I was so surprised and distressed to read TNC's commentary on the supplemental EIS. It was pure gobbledygook, rambling on about lampriciding being ill-advised because, having no "endpoint," it didn't contribute "toward the goal of having the system 'manage itself,'" as if this were ever anyone's goal or even a possible goal. By this logic we should write off 80 percent of the Yellowstone cutts on earth and forget about perpetual alien-lake-trout control in Yellowstone Lake; and we should abandon perpetual lamprey control in Lake Superior, a program that has allowed native lake trout, the top predators in that vast ecosystem, to recover to the point that they're self-sustaining. The supplemental EIS ignores the "likely detriment" to existing fish that would result from stocking salmon and lake trout "strains of a different origin and different genetics than the populations that were lost," continued TNC. By this logic the United States should never have introduced tundra and Canadian anatum peregrine falcons after our eastern peregrine was lost.

Such statements provide ordnance to a minority of hothead sportsmen/property-rights types who, at least in Vermont, seem to make a majority of the noise. I scarcely dare imagine what else they're saying about TNC after reading their comments on our internet bulletin board (http://bbs.flyrodreel.com) regarding a column in which I'd merely mentioned TNC's role in land preservation. For example: "Dear Ted Williams . . . TNC appears to delight in crushing the will of local people. . . . Where is your article on the need for lamprey control in Lake Champlain? Your buddies are interested in protecting the sea lamprey, mudpuppy, etc. . . . These organizations are sucking blood money out of the restoration effort. . . . Go ahead change the name to Sea Lamprey & Mudpuppy Magazine and see how well it is received by fly fishermen!"

To its credit, TNC chose to respond calmly and rationally to this and other tantrums and to engage the state and feds in dialogue rather than court action. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and Audubon Vermont, on the other hand, sued.

What I find so frustrating about the environmental community, not just in Vermont but nationwide, is its frequent inability to see native fish as part of ecosystems, even when these natives are apex predators. In announcing its lawsuit, VPIRG advanced the argument that Atlantic salmon and lake trout recovery was "strictly for sport fishing." It then proclaimed that TFM has "potentially far-ranging and largely unknown effects on non-target organisms." This is an untruth. There are no "far-ranging" effects; no piscicide is safer for non-targets; and no pesticide, with the possible exception of rotenone, has been better studied. During the 2002 treatment of Lewis Creek managers placed mudpuppies in wire cages to see what would happen to them. Not one was harmed.

The supplemental EIS commentary of VPIRG and Vermont Audubon, whose lawsuit failed, made no more sense than TNC's: "The benefit of catching fish without visible scars accrues to a tiny segment of the population while the potential damage to the environment from lampricide treatments must be borne by all Vermonters," declared VPIRG, as if scarring were the issue or had something to do with rebuilding Lake Champlain's native ecosystem or as if Vermonters were in any way threatened by quick, localized, EPA-approved applications of TFM at less than five parts per million. "The intent of the program is to produce more and larger individuals of three species of game fish," remarked Audubon Vermont, as if Atlantic salmon, lake trout and walleyes were of no value in and for themselves and played no role in the lake's native ecosystem.

If Vermont finally commits to aggressive chemical control, Champlain's sea lampreys will probably be reduced to something like their natural level back when native salmonids had the ability to avoid them. But what role should the saltwater race of sea lampreys be allowed to play in the Atlantic Ocean and in the rivers it collects? With one hand Vermont and the feds are killing lampreys that are apparently native to Lake Champlain and, with the other-a few miles away, over a low mountain range-they're rehabilitating native lampreys in the Connecticut River.

In the spring of 2003 the feds and the watershed states passed 8,063 lampreys over the fishway at Vernon, Vermont. Downstream, at Holoyoke, Massachusetts, they passed 53,030. Isn't this schizoid, not to mention dangerous and irresponsible? Yes, according to some fish pundits. For example, The Lawrence (Massachusetts) Eagle-Tribune's respected outdoor columnist, Roger Aziz scolds managers for allowing sea "lamprey eels [which] literally suck the life out of their host fish" through fish-passage facilities: "The fish ladders ought to be used to diminish the lamprey and prevent it from entering into the lakes and streams of New Hampshire."

But in the marine ecosystem saltwater lampreys limit no species; they are incapable of feeding when they enter freshwater; and they all die after spawning. The danger to freshwater fish is "zero to none," to quote Fred Kircheis, former director of Maine's Atlantic Salmon Commission who, contracted by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, has just finished a white paper recommending policy for saltwater sea-lamprey management. When you try to acclimate a saltwater lamprey to freshwater it dies, he explains.

With their carcasses, feces, eggs, milt, and young, saltwater lampreys bring a feast of nutrients to sterile, glaciated feeder streams. Spawners clear sediments and pebbles with their sucker mouths, creating clean areas that attract spawning salmon. Lamprey carcasses are gorged on by the caddis larvae that trout and young salmon eat. Larval lampreys bury in the bottom, thereby preventing a prime impediment to successful salmonid reproduction-

stream embeddedness. Lampreys feed eagles, ospreys, herons, vultures, turtles, minks, otters, crayfish and dozens of other native predators and scavengers. "It wasn't until I started talking to some birders that I realized owls prey heavily on lampreys when they come up in the shallows at night," says Steve Gephard, Connecticut's anadromous-fish chief. "Sea lampreys have played a very important role in this watershed for a lot longer than any other species. We don't begin to recognize the benefits."