Groups object to Gunsight Lake fish project

Local environmental groups are objecting to a Glacier National Park plan to establish native bull and westslope cutthroat trout in Gunsight Lake.

In a letter to the Park Service sent last month, the organizations claim “this project is an experiment, it has not been proven to work and amounts to playing god with the fisheries in Glacier National Park.”

The letter is signed by Arlene Montgomery, program director, Friends of the Wild Swan; George Nickas, executive director, Wilderness Watch; Keith Hammer, chair, Swan View Coalition; Michael Garrity, executive director, Alliance for the Wild Rockies; and Steve Kelly, president, Council on Fish and Wildlife.

Gunsight Lake, tucked beneath Mount Jackson at the Continental Divide currently has non-native rainbow trout in it. Glacier’s plan calls for using rotenone, a common poison that degenerates quickly in the environment, to kill the non-native rainbow trout. Then park officials will re-stock the lake with native westslope and bull trout, creating a native fishery.

But the environmental groups raise several concerns, including the use of helicopters and other motorized equipment in recommended wilderness.

They also object to restocking the lake at all, claiming it was fishless before it was stocked with rainbows decades ago.

The St. Mary River drains Gunsight Lake and has waterfalls in it between Gunsight and St. Mary Lake, which, presumably, would have stopped any upstream fish passage.

“Restocking a lake that was naturally fishless in the wilderness violates the Wilderness Act. This project does not restore the wilderness character of the lake, westslope cutthroat or bull trout. The wilderness character of this lake is that it did not contain fish. If the fish are removed from Gunsight Lake it should not be restocked with any fish, that would be restoration,” the groups argued.

They also claim the use of helicopters is a violation of the Wilderness Act. Glacier National Park, however, has no designated wilderness under federal law, it’s recommended wilderness and the park largely manages it as such.

In the Environmental Assessment released in May, it concedes there will be some wilderness impacts, but they will be temporary.

Glacier National Park has undertaken similar projects in other watersheds, as it attempts to create refuges on both sides of the divide for native fishes.

For example, it continues to net non-native lake trout out of Quartz Lake using a motorized boat and it’s doing similar work in Logging Lake.

It’s also moved bull trout upstream from Logging Lake into Grace Lake, where the fish are apparently thriving. And in the Trout Lake drainage, it completed a project where non-native Yellowstone cutthroat trout were removed from Camas Lake and replaced with native westslope cutthroat trout in a project that was very similar to the proposed Gunsight project.

Camas Lake, like Gunsight Lake, is above a natural waterfall barrier.

By moving fish above natural barriers like waterfalls, it protects the trout from non-native species. For example, westslope cutthroat trout in Glacier National Park are threatened by hybridization from rainbow trout. Bull trout populations have been greatly diminished by non-native lake trout west of the divide. Lake trout are native east of the divide.

This method of poisoning out non-native fishes from lakes and streams in wilderness is not without precedent, either.

A few years ago, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks treated 21 lakes in and around the Bob Marshall Wilderness with the same methods, restoring native westslope cutthroat trout in those wilderness lakes.

Like the Glacier National Park project, it, too, used helicopters over the course of a few weeks to complete each project.

Glacier National Park officials plan on starting the Gunsight project in September.