Super predators in Yellowstone park

[El Jason]

Smallmouth bass at Yellowstone’s doorstep, posing potential ‘nightmare’ - WyoFile

Angler’s late February catch in the Gardner River raises concern amongst biologists that the nonnative species could invade Yellowstone National Park.

wyofile.com

 

[rmyoung1]

Dang it

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Of course he released it like a good BZN resident would do haha.

 

[MTLabrador]

That isn’t good at all for cutthroats.

 

[R.K.]

I, for one, will do my part to eat the problem- smallmouth are delicious.

 

[runningmt]

I, for one, will do my part to eat the problem- smallmouth are delicious.

Agreed, I’ve felt guilty in the past for eating them in when I lived in MN

Now that they’re here in Paradise Valley, I won’t feel bad at all

 

[Hem]

No dams on the Yellowstone, shouldn't be a surprise. Current climate change resulting in water warming up?

 

[Deleted member 28227]

I, for one, will do my part to eat the problem- smallmouth are delicious.

The real take away here is catch and release guys are monsters.

 

[SaskHunter]

Oh, with that title I thought Harvey Weinstein was walking around Yellowstone...

 

[Sytes]

“Obviously this doesn’t really mean impending doom by any stretch,” Sweet told WyoFile about the smallmouth catch. “It’s a slow process of moving upstream, but I hate to see it.”
Expansion, Sweet thought, was inevitable, as the water temperatures on the Yellowstone plateau become more agreeable to warmer-water species.
“There’s no way to stop that unless there’s a barrier in the way,” he said. “No matter what people think about global warming, the world is warming and our streams are warming.”

Is it a significant challenge to create a barrier similar to those used to block pike from trout lakes? Sure, takes one tard to toss pike caught from one to the other... Never going to stop human stupidity though install a second barrier a mile further and it seems to be a good stop gap from the natural progression and good electric sampling within the 1 mile "DMZ" /insert humored grin.

 

[trb]

Well that's bad news. I worked several years on invasive fish removal for the USFWS in the Colorado River basin. Smallmouth and all centrarchids are a real problem. They hammer larval native fish that depend on the riparian backwaters that overlap exactly with where centrarchids tend to hang out along western rivers because of warmer temps and slower water. Electrofishing removal can have some mitigation impact but it's not a long term solution, and unfortunately there really isn't one.

 

[rogerthat]

Well hell I pulled Bertha here out of the park back in 06

 

[rogerthat]

In all seriousness I’m not surprised. The lower Yellowstone is infested with them

 

[R.K.]

“Obviously this doesn’t really mean impending doom by any stretch,” Sweet told WyoFile about the smallmouth catch. “It’s a slow process of moving upstream, but I hate to see it.”
Expansion, Sweet thought, was inevitable, as the water temperatures on the Yellowstone plateau become more agreeable to warmer-water species.
“There’s no way to stop that unless there’s a barrier in the way,” he said. “No matter what people think about global warming, the world is warming and our streams are warming.”

Is it a significant challenge to create a barrier similar to those used to block pike from trout lakes? Sure, takes one tard to toss pike caught from one to the other... Never going to stop human stupidity though install a second barrier a mile further and it seems to be a good stop gap from the natural progression and good electric sampling within the 1 mile "DMZ" /insert humored grin.

Well, I can think of one pretty damn big barrier to keep them out of Yellowstone Lake. The problem there, is you already have a different super predator in Yellowstone Lake.