Park plans more lake trout netting
<p>Glacier Park officials want to gillnet nonnative lake trout in Quartz and Logging lakes to protect native bull trout, like this one shown here.</p>
Glacier National Park has released a plan to continue killing non-native lake trout in Quartz Lake and expand that effort to Logging Lake as well.
Park and U.S. Geological Survey biologists began gillnetting lake trout in Quartz Lake in 2009, and they were successful in substantially lowering, but not eliminating, the lake trout population there.
The Park’s concern is that lake trout out compete native bull trout and will eventually take over the lake and change the dynamics of the native fishery. Lake trout are vociferous predators and also feed on native cutthroat trout.
Bull trout are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Both Quartz and Logging lakes once held native bull trout fisheries, but lake trout over the course of a few decades have been able to migrate from Flathead Lake up tributaries into the Park lakes.
Biologists would like to expand the program at Logging Lake to include transplanting juvenile bull trout from Logging Lake upstream into Grace Lake. The hope is bull trout will establish populations in Grace Lake, which is protected by a large waterfall that is impassable to fish.
Grace Lake currently is home to Yellowstone-westslope cutthroat trout hybrids and is considered one of the best fishing lakes in the Park.
But the lake trout project does not come without impacts. Quartz and Logging lakes are in recommended wilderness, and biologists propose using motorized boats to haul the gillnets used to eliminate lake trout and using up to five helicopter flights a year to ferry in supplies.
Biologists say they looked at using rowboats, but rowboats would be inefficient and potentially dangerous if bad weather set in while they were out on one of the lakes. There is also the potential to and disturb nesting bald eagles and loons, though biologists claim those are “negligible.”
The lake trout project is also long-term — biologists plan on netting the two lakes for seven to 10 years and be on the water about 16 weeks a year. The plan is to use the nets in May, June, September and October.
An environmental assessment for the lake tout plan is available online at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/LoggingQuartz.
Comments can be made directly through the Web site or by writing to Superintendent, Glacier National Park, Attn: Logging/Quartz EA, P.O. Box 128, West Glacier MT 59936. Comments are due by Jan. 22. For more information, call 406-888-7800.