How many hatcheries in PA

[silverfox]

Since you are digging into the research, maybe you could find this information.

Which stream sections in PA have native brook trout populations and are stocked with hatchery trout by the PFBC, coop hatcheries, or both?

That would be really good to know, and I've wondered about this too. The problem is a few things;

• We'd need species data on the "natural reproduction" stream sections across the state (not public).
• We'd need stocking data from all the coop nurseries (not public).
• We'd need stocking data from private individuals, which doesn't exist yet because no stocking permit is required (yet) for private citizens to stock trout.

 

[Fish Sticks]

First of all, I really don't care...

Second, does "what's out there to control them in limited places," include a bevy of security guards or additional Waterways Conservation Officers to safeguard the watersheds to prevent people from RE-introducing Brown Trout where they've been removed?

THAT'S my point...

In Pennsylvania:

• It is unlawful for a person to sell, purchase, offer for sale or barter live Snakehead species in Pennsylvania.
• It is unlawful to possess live Snakehead species in Pennsylvania.
• It is unlawful to introduce or import live Snakehead species into Pennsylvania waters.
• Transportation of live Snakehead species in or through Pennsylvania is prohibited.

In addition to other laws prohibiting the transferring of various other species into or between watersheds...

Yet, all of the above happen all the time...

For that reason, I will continue to believe any attempt to eradicate Brown Trout that are extremely popular amongst PA anglers for the purpose of creating an exclusive domain for native Brook Trout to be a fool's folly.

Finally, I am a fisherman with a casual interest in biology and a greater interest in catching fish. For those reasons I really am not interested enough to pursue this conversation any further.

Lol I guess removal never works then I will tell the biologists out west that saved the golden trout and a handful of rare cuthroat species with it that it’s a fools folly to save those species with removal. And if just want fishing with a few biology Snapple facts sprinkled in…again, why are you going so hard about things you invisibly don’t know about in the conservation forum.

 

[Bamboozle]

This AIN'T "out west" or are you too smug in your own self importance and blowhardness to realize that....

BTW smack blow hard, are you Mrs Paul's Fish Sticks or some Walmart reasonable facsimile...

 

[Fish Sticks]

Pfbc has little to no jurisdiction over private trout hatcheries, similar to pgc and deer farms.

Also, if you are interested in scientific communication you may benefit from learning how to foster cooperation and partnerships.

This AIN'T "out west" or are you too smug in your own self importance and blowhardness to realize that....

BTW smack blow hard, are you Mrs Paul's Fish Sticks or some Walmart reasonable facsimile...

Smug: definition just changed to someone who takes recommendations of experts I guess? and if it won’t work in the east why is TU’s brook trout conservation portfolio, members of a federal USGS brook trout research unit, and the eastern brook trout giving presentations on XYY super males at conferences? Why is manual removal going on right now 1 hour south of Harrisburg across the Maryland border? Why are researchers at Allegheny university looking at barrier vs. invasion trade offs up stream of brown trout stocking locations? I’ll inform the collective century+ of research experience that’s talking about seriously doing this in a few limited places in the native range of the brook trout where it makes sense that bamboozled says it’s a waste of time.

3rd party Costco fish sticks

 

[Fish Sticks]

Smug: definition just changed to someone who takes recommendations of experts I guess? and if it won’t work in the east why is TU’s brook trout conservation portfolio, members of a federal USGS brook trout research unit, and the eastern brook trout giving presentations on XYY super males at conferences? Why is manual removal going on right now 1 hour south of Harrisburg across the Maryland border? Why are researchers at Allegheny university looking at barrier vs. invasion trade offs up stream of brown trout stocking locations? I’ll inform the collective century+ of research experience that’s talking about seriously doing this in a few limited places in the native range of the brook trout where it makes sense that bamboozled says it’s a waste of time.

3rd party Costco fish sticks

TU’s conservation portfolio for brook trout recommending removal in limited areas *

 

[silverfox]

Since you are digging into the research, maybe you could find this information.

Which stream sections in PA have native brook trout populations and are stocked with hatchery trout by the PFBC, coop hatcheries, or both?

One other variable there that I meant to mention is that there are also cases where fish are stocked in Class A's even though they know they're not supposed to do it. 2 years ago I caught some "suspicious" brook trout in a Class A. I talked to the AFM and he said he'd remind the coop they're not supposed to put fish in there (above an impoundment). Last year we caught freshly stocked rainbows and more suspicious brook trout than the year prior. By suspicious I mean I'm 99.9% sure these are stocked brook trout because they put them below the impoundment too and they're the same fish. I don't know if they were just thumbing their nose at the AFM or simply don't care.

There was another email chain last year about a Class A with rainbows that turned up. That one is connected to a stocked stream and the AFM (different AFM from above) suggested they moved up into the Class A from the stocked stream. No way to prove otherwise in that case and he very well could be right.

That also leads to another issue, which is that stocked fish don't always stay where you put them, or get caught/removed or taken out by predators. So even though the stream or section itself isn't stocked directly, stocking just below the Class A limit or even in the next stream down might cause stocked fish to end up where they're not supposed to. Not sure I mentioned this, but I caught a stocked brook trout in MD last year. That's notable because MD doesn't stock brook trout. It didn't take a lot of sleuthing to realize it swam down out of PA. Roughly 20 river miles and 3 different streams.

So it would be really difficult to even put a real number to the total number of brook trout streams that are "stocked over" (directly or indirectly).

 

[Mike]

Private hatcheries are under the jurisdiction of the Pa Dept of Agriculture. After all, it is aquaculture.

 

[flyguyfishing]

By the scientific definition of invasive species, homo sapiens are clearly an invasive species. We are not native to this land (popular scientific thought is people have been in Notth America 25,000- 50,000 years, which is a blink of an eye in evolutionary timeframe) We are established. We are a threat to native species and are a threat to biodiversity.

Things are not binary.

 

[silverfox]

By the scientific definition of invasive species, homo sapiens are clearly an invasive species. We are not native to this land (popular scientific thought is people have been in Notth America 25,000- 50,000 years, which is a blink of an eye in evolutionary timeframe) We are established. We are a threat to native species and are a threat to biodiversity.

Things are not binary.

Sounds like whataboutism.

 

[troutbert]

Her

One other variable there that I meant to mention is that there are also cases where fish are stocked in Class A's even though they know they're not supposed to do it. 2 years ago I caught some "suspicious" brook trout in a Class A. I talked to the AFM and he said he'd remind the coop they're not supposed to put fish in there (above an impoundment). Last year we caught freshly stocked rainbows and more suspicious brook trout than the year prior. By suspicious I mean I'm 99.9% sure these are stocked brook trout because they put them below the impoundment too and they're the same fish. I don't know if they were just thumbing their nose at the AFM or simply don't care.

There was another email chain last year about a Class A with rainbows that turned up. That one is connected to a stocked stream and the AFM (different AFM from above) suggested they moved up into the Class A from the stocked stream. No way to prove otherwise in that case and he very well could be right.

That also leads to another issue, which is that stocked fish don't always stay where you put them, or get caught/removed or taken out by predators. So even though the stream or section itself isn't stocked directly, stocking just below the Class A limit or even in the next stream down might cause stocked fish to end up where they're not supposed to. Not sure I mentioned this, but I caught a stocked brook trout in MD last year. That's notable because MD doesn't stock brook trout. It didn't take a lot of sleuthing to realize it swam down out of PA. Roughly 20 river miles and 3 different streams.

So it would be really difficult to even put a real number to the total number of brook trout streams that are "stocked over" (directly or indirectly).

That's true. You can't know what every individual with a bucket does.

But a good start would be to know which stream sections with native brook trout are stocked by the PFBC & the coop hatcheries. Because that would be the vast majority of stocking over native brook trout. And the PFBC has records of this info. If some conservation group or university researchers requested this info, the PFBC would probably supply it.

 

[Fish Sticks]

By the scientific definition of invasive species, homo sapiens are clearly an invasive species. We are not native to this land (popular scientific thought is people have been in Notth America 25,000- 50,000 years, which is a blink of an eye in evolutionary timeframe) We are established. We are a threat to native species and are a threat to biodiversity.

Things are not binary.

Binary just means it either is or isn’t yes or no. Doesn’t have anything to do with feelings or if you like the answer you get when applying the scientific definition. With the invasive trout, people incorrectly think the correct application of the word “invasive” means by default we HAVE TO remove all of them. Well we can’t, how about instead just acknowledging their invasive so people understand the potential for trophic cascades and destabilizing effects on the native ecosystem. Their not going anywhere in the majority of places I would wager and you can still enjoy fishing for them it’s not like buying blood diamonds. It doesn’t make you in the wrong to aknowledge something as invasive and fish for it. Maybe that will help with how the word invasive makes them feel about what they personally value?

 

[Fish Sticks]

Her

That's true. You can't know what every individual with a bucket does.

But a good start would be to know which stream sections with native brook trout are stocked by the PFBC & the coop hatcheries. Because that would be the vast majority of stocking over native brook trout. And the PFBC has records of this info. If some conservation group or university researchers requested this info, the PFBC would probably supply it.

Couldn’t agree with you more troutbert! Since we know invasive trout are a barrier to bidirectional gene flow I would love to see such a map. This would make the fish stocked that function like a bad culvert and cause connectivity issues more visible in relation Brook trout populations instead of looking at a blue line and wondering what lives in that stream. So if you look at the aquatic organism passage score of a culvert on one of these GIS maps that doesn’t factor in the agencies stocked fish as a biological barrier. Some more transparency would be welcome so we can see where connectivity is being negatively effected in addition to the standard negative interactions between invasive trout and native brook trout everyone knows about( predation, pushing out of thermal refuge, excavating brook trout redds for repurposement, completion for food, disease transmission ect.).

 

[silverfox]

Her

That's true. You can't know what every individual with a bucket does.

But a good start would be to know which stream sections with native brook trout are stocked by the PFBC & the coop hatcheries. Because that would be the vast majority of stocking over native brook trout. And the PFBC has records of this info. If some conservation group or university researchers requested this info, the PFBC would probably supply it.

Honestly, I've resisted even asking for this because I don't want to create a "make work" project for someone at the agency. In that case, simply to state what we all likely already know.

In lieu of the actual data, I'll quote Dave Nihart from an article;
"Only about 20% of the stream sections stocked by the commission contain wild brook trout, and none of those sections contain moderate or high-density populations, Nihart said."

"only" 20% of stocked streams sounds like a lot to me. That's also "stocked by the commission" and I'm not sure if that includes coop stocking or not. It certainly doesn't include private stocking or transient fish.

 

[flyguyfishing]

Binary just means it either is or isn’t yes or no. Doesn’t have anything to do with feelings or if you like the answer you get when applying the scientific definition. With the invasive trout, people incorrectly think the correct application of the word “invasive” means by default we HAVE TO remove all of them. Well we can’t, how about instead just acknowledging their invasive so people understand the potential for trophic cascades and destabilizing effects on the native ecosystem. Their not going anywhere in the majority of places I would wager and you can still enjoy fishing for them it’s not like buying blood diamonds. It doesn’t make you in the wrong to aknowledge something as invasive and fish for it. Maybe that will help with how the word invasive makes them feel about what they personally value?

I applied your scientific definition of invasive species to homo sapien and it is clear. Homo sapiens are invasive.

Do you agree humans are invasive or would you like to change your scientific definition of invasive species?

 

[silverfox]

I applied your scientific definition of invasive species to homo sapien and it is clear. Homo sapiens are invasive.

Do you agree humans are invasive or would you like to change your scientific definition of invasive species?

Again, whataboutism. So because homo sapiens are "invasive", therefore we should do nothing about invasive species?

 

[Fish Sticks]

I applied your scientific definition of invasive species to homo sapien and it is clear. Homo sapiens are invasive.

Do you agree humans are invasive or would you like to change your scientific definition of invasive species?

The scientific definition is not “mine” lol and I’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pole.

 

[tomgamber]

I don't think anyone actually disputed the merits of the "scientific definition" of invasive species you quoted. The original question (in post#2) was posed that because of that definition, should all "invasive species" be eliminated? yes, or no?

 

[silverfox]

I don't think anyone actually disputed the merits of the "scientific definition" of invasive species you quoted. The original question (in post#2) was posed that because of that definition, should all "invasive species" be eliminated? yes, or no?

The moment someone says we should try to limit nonnative fish impacts on brook trout, someone always has to immediately leap to "should we eliminate all invasive species". Nobody is talking about wiping invasive species off the state's landscape. In some cases, as beneficial as it might be, it's impossible to do.

For some reason, people simply can't decouple the idea of managing one place for one thing without it needing to be absolute to an extreme. i.e., we should manage specifically for brook trout above an impoundment seems to always turn into "eRmaGerd! ThEm wAnTs tO kiLL aLL mUh BrUhn TrAht!"

Yes, all invasive species should be eliminated. Is it possible? No. Should we, therefore, give up on all invasive species? No. Should we eradicate brown trout from the entirety of Pennsylvania? No. Should we preferentially manage for brook trout where possible? Yes. (by the way, that's almost verbatim the language in the current trout management plan published by PFBC).

I'd also argue that homo sapiens aren't considered invasive in North America. Invasive species are "introduced". We moved ourselves here. No outside force "introduced" homo sapiens to the continent. Everything else about our impact etc. fits the definition though.

 

[Fish Sticks]

I don't think anyone actually disputed the merits of the "scientific definition" of invasive species you quoted. The original question (in post#2) was posed that because of that definition, should all "invasive species" be eliminated? yes, or no?

Currently as I understand it that’s not possible. But if your asking from a “if it were” stand point I would say I rarely think absolutes are a viable idea. I think it should be an area by area assessment conducted by experts. I am able to share experts research and advocate for management that is inline with established science but I’m not a practitioner or an expert. You would need someone like that for a case by case area by area basis to tell you about the interactions and what’s at stake.

 

[tomgamber]

Apparently your decision not to answer the original question is why this thread is such a train wreck.

should all "invasive species" be eliminated? yes, or no?

I'll answer it. No. Many are there because no other fish would be present enough to provide recreational fishing opportunity. and that's all this is about. period.