A few weeks ago Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks released a draft EA for their proposal to restore Arctic grayling into several Southwestern Montana waters, including several tribs of the Madison, Wise River, Trail Creek, Twin Lakes and Van Houten Lake.
The primal beauty and elegance of Arctic grayling aside, the plan to complete the reintroduction using Remote Site Incubators (RSI’s) to hatch Arctic grayling eggs from conservation broodstocks directly into stream reaches (or potentially fry or fingerling stocking into lakes) without ‘manipulating’ (read destroying) existing fish populations is sheer genius and should be applauded by all.
Well done Montana FWP and thanks to friend of Chi Wulff Joe Moore for jogging my memory on this one. (As part of a growing cadre of fly fishers who are speaking up – sometimes critically – of agencies and entities managing fish and fisheries these days, we feel it’s vitally important to commend folks when great ideas and good plans roll out. It’s far, far too easy, and far too common, to simply bitch about things online and fall silent when we should be giving credit where credit is due.)
Read all about it here and download the EA (only 27 pages) yourself; the RSI’s look pretty damned interesting.
Images via the above mentioned EA.
