Yellowstone Lake Crisis: Confronting a Lake Trout Invasion. A Report to the Director of the National Park Service

摘要

Yellowstone Lake is home of the premier surviving inland cutthroat trout fishery in North America. This fishery is threatened with destruction by illegally introduced lake trout, which were discovered in 1994. The lake trout are known to exist in at least four and possibly as many as six age groups, proof of a relatively small but reproducing population. The older age groups are now able to reproduce, and the lake trout population will almost certainly grow rapidly. The discovery of these non-native lake trout in Yellowstone Lake caused great alarm among fisheries biologists throughout the greater Yellowstone area because of the lake trout's reputation for displacing species such as cutthroat trout in other western lakes. Park administrators sought to verify the 'doomsday' opinion of local biologists by arranging an assessment of the situation by United States and Canadian specialists in population dynamics and lake trout biology. The experts convened an information-sharing workshop in February 1995, and concluded that the lake trout population in Yellowstone Lake is likely to expand and cause precipitous decline in the cutthroat trout population.