State of Our Trout Part II

Environmental writers, including me, have long cited the greenback program as one of the most spectacular success stories of the Endangered Species Act. The recovery goal was 20 populations. Today, with at least 60 populations, greenbacks should have been de-listed from the Endangered Species Act. But in August 2007, much to the glee of the anti-piscicide axis, an ugly genetics issue arose.  

A three-year study led by University of Colorado researchers “found,” reported The New York Times, “that out of nine fish populations believed to be descendants of original greenbacks, five were actually Colorado River cutthroat trout.” And this item from The Western Native Trout Campaign—a cooperative venture by the Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Rivers Council (which together sabotaged Paiute cutthroat recovery in 2003, after the groups swallowed retired macro-invertebrate researcher Nancy Erman’s anti-piscicide snake oil hook, line, boat and motor), the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and a genuine hero of salmonid recovery, Trout Unlimited: “Tragically, biologists recently discovered that several of the greenback populations were genetically contaminated by as much as 33 percent with Yellowstone cutthroat trout.”

That is tragic news indeed. It is also incorrect news, at least according to Dr. Behnke, who probably knows more about trout and salmon than anyone alive. In any case, The New York Times and the Western Native Trout Campaign had no basis for reporting that the researchers “found” or “discovered” anything. Finding and discovering are not the same as “claiming.”  

Behnke submits that if there’s something tragic about this and similar “erroneous conclusions” about greenback genetics, it’s that they “have caused the recovery program to flounder in confusion” and “led to the poisoning of pure greenback brood stocks” (not that there aren’t plenty left).  

“Greenbacks,” Behnke writes, “retain a little DNA from the other side of the continental divide. But this is a completely natural event….[Dr. Andrew Martin, the University of Colorado professor who oversaw this latest study and co-authored the paper] seems to be completely unaware of all that has gone on before him. He’s been brainwashed by techniques, methods and state-of-the art statistical analyses. Any rational judgment based on a range and depth of knowledge is eliminated from his thinking. Doesn’t he realize that all of the samples used in his study came from small, fragmented populations subjected to confusion caused by the founder effect?” 

By “founder effect” Behnke means the natural and dramatic physical differences that appear when, after you place fish with a wide variety of genetic markers into multiple habitats, random selection by predators and disease leaves just a few “founders” of each new population. 

Could it be that, having given the world back these fish, Behnke has allowed his emotions to cloud his objectivity? I know him well enough to state that such behavior would be alien to his character. Still, I asked Bruce Rosenlund of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Colorado Fish and Wildlife Management Assistance Office for his thoughts on the issue. He said this: “The more information we collect on this, the fuzzier the picture gets….I guess I’m not convinced that the markers indicate much of anything; I tend to be more in Behnke’s camp.”

Gila Trout

The Gila trout, down-listed to threatened in 2006 and native to the Gila and San Francisco river drainages in New Mexico and Arizona, is another heat-tolerant, high-desert salmonid. Most of its natural range is in New Mexico, where recovery has been nearly as spectacular as that of the Apache trout, whose range it slightly overlaps. But progress has been anything but smooth. Fires and overgrazing have decimated important populations. Competition by browns and introgression by rainbows—some of this facilitated by government-hating, mongrel-loving saboteurs—has continually frustrated fisheries managers.  

Here—in the national epicenter of county supremacy where anything undertaken by the state or feds is regarded with suspicion and paranoia—regulatory bodies have been easily seduced by full-time anti-piscicide crusader Ann McCampbell and her minions. These include Grant County (which tried and failed to impede piscicide use by passing what it called the “Pollution Nuisance Ordinance Act”), the Water Quality Control Commission and even the New Mexico Game Commission. After the Game Commission stripped the state game and fish department of authority to use piscicides, I reported in July/October 2005 FR&R that Gila recovery had been “stopped dead in its tracks.” But our ink was scarcely dry when a major obstacle—the Game Commission chair— got disappeared by the governor for alleged improprieties. Shortly thereafter, Gila project leader, David Propst, wangled permission to use antimycin, a piscicide even more effective and shorter-lived than rotenone.