A Fine-Spotted Trout on Corral Creek: On the Cutthroat Competition of Native Trout in the Northern Rockies by Matthew Dickerson Phd

Author:Matthew Dickerson, Phd [Matthew Dickerson, Phd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nature, animals, Fish, Ecosystems & Habitats, Wilderness
ISBN: 9781609406172
Google: mv6MzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Wings Press
Published: 2021-09-15T23:42:04.305520+00:00

Several days later, I speak separately with two cutthroat trout experts. In the morning I meet the National Park Service biologist Christopher Downs for coffee in Columbia Falls. Then I return to West Glacier and connect with USGS biologist Joseph Giersch at the USGS research office, and lastly with USGS biologist Clint Muhlfeld, with whom I spend most of the day on a research-and-teaching field trip with some university students. I question all three biologists about the threats to and future prospects of the native trout of Glacier National Park. Though each has different stories to tell, and varying insights and thoughts related to their experiences, some common threads emerge in these conversations.

With Downs and then Giersch, I speak at length about the impacts of climate change. Glaciers are melting quickly in Glacier National Park. They are just a remnant of what they were a century ago when they gave the park its name. Many expect them to be completely gone by 2030. When they are gone, so too will be the year-round supply of icy cold water that melts off them in the hot summer months, feeding the lakes and rivers and helping keep them full and cool. Combined with a decline in the annual snowpack, climate change is most likely to result in declining summer water levels and increased water temperature.

Giersch is more aware of one aspect of that negative impact than almost anybody. He has been studying two species of stoneflies, the Meltwater Stonefly and the Glacier Stonefly: tiny algae-munching aquatic insects that live almost exclusively in the streams that flow off melting glaciers and permanent snow packs, thriving in greatest numbers within the first few hundred meters below the glaciers. Though they live in streams too small and too close to the glaciers to be of direct importance to feeding cutthroat trout, they are an important part of the alpine food chain, providing the first link from photosynthesizing algae to the animal world. Within a hundred meters of a melting glacier, they can reach densities of about 1,500 per square meter. Larger insects (including species of mayflies) feed on the nearly microscopic stoneflies and in turn become food for birds, rodents, and larger insects. When the glaciers and snow packs have melted away, the prospects for these two small species of stonefly is not good, and an important part of the alpine food chain in Glacier National Park will be gone or greatly diminished. The ecosystem as a whole will be less resilient.

And yet for all of the negative impact of climate change, Downs thought that the population of native cutthroat within Glacier National Park as a whole was well-positioned to adapt to the changes. The waters of the park are protected from development and resource extraction such as forestry and mining. There are no road-building projects. Rivers like Upper McDonald Creek, which I had so admired on my bike trip, flow through largely undisturbed forested wilderness. Compared to much of the country, pollution is minimal. In short, there are few additional stressors other than climate change.

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