Environmentalists Vs. Native Trout

In Montana's upper Missouri River system, where westslope cutthroats have been extirpated from all but two percent of their historic range, the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is using a total of 20 gallons of antimycin and 10 gallons of rotenone to make a westslope sanctuary from 77 miles of upper Cherry Creek, now infested with brook trout and introgressed rainbows and Yellowstone cutts. (See "Angler of the Year, Ted Turner," January 2002.) You've heard the old saw that just one concerned environmentalist can "make a difference." Well, it's true but not always good. For four years the Cherry Creek project, the most ambitious riverine piscicide treatment ever attempted in North America, was placed on hold purely because of a lay person's fantasies about antimycin, rotenone and even the potassium permanganate with which they are neutralized at downstream stations. William Fairhurst of Three Forks, Montana sued in state court on grounds that the department was "polluting" a public water supply. The utterly meritless action was finally dismissed, but while it was underway and while Fairhurst was threatening a federal suit the department's timid legal advisors made managers sit on their hands.

The first phase-treatment of 105-acre Cherry Lake and about 11 miles of stream with 10 parts per billion antimycin-was completed with superb results in August 2003. "We had sentinel fish posted in net bags throughout each treatment site every day; and we got 100 percent mortality," reports project leader Pat Clancey. "After a second treatment next year, we'll seed this stretch with westslope eggs, and we'll stock catchable adults in Cherry Lake just for the recreational fishery."

But Fairhurst isn't finished. Now he's filed his federal suit on grounds that "the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent unreasonably adverse effects on the environment."

During the alleged pollution of upper Cherry Creek this past summer Clancey and his team observed the most sensitive invertebrate in the watershed, a species of caddis, happily scavenging poisoned trout.