How rainbow trout have invaded the West (fish farming is big business)

February 10, 2010 · Posted by in Environment 

"An Entirely Synthetic Fish" was written by CU prof Anders Halverson.

In Colorado and across the country land managers spend millions of dollars and hours battling invasive species: bugs, weeds, little critters.

And at the same time, land managers dump millions (literally) of rainbow trout into rivers and lakes across the country.

In his new book, “An Entirely Synthetic Fish,” CU professor Anders Halverson describes how we got here (to this place where one trout is stocked for every three people in the United States) and what that means for aquatic ecology, especially other fish.

From the Daily Camera:

Halverson has fished his entire life. While growing up in Denver in the 70s, the rainbow trout was the state fish. The irony of honoring a non-native fish as a state symbol, and the contradiction of getting out into the wild to catch a farmed fish, both became a central consideration in Halverson’s book.

“There’s a fascinating paradox about fishing. A lot of anglers I see fishing as an escape of civilization and industrialization or a spiritual escape from society,” Halverson said. “Yet you have a paradox of most of the fish they catch are the product of industrialization.”

The introduction of rainbow trout has also had environmental consequences. The fish are thought to hybridize with native trout, which affects their genetic structure and ability to survive.

There are more than a dozen types in Colorado with many considered either, threatened, endangered or at-risk by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Colorado’s state fish, the greenback cutthroat is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.

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