The PFBC is in the way? Do you know this to be the case or are you just speculating?
We all know this to be the case because they have no target or plans for removals themselves, they don’t communicate the value of removal to the public, they lie to the public on state television telling them brown trout are not invasive, they won’t change regulations in any one stream to support removal. They have a reputation within the conservation community as absentee managers when it comes to conservation that just want to sell licenses in the wild wild west this state has become for fisheries. You won’t find the last one published anywhere lol.
on the above document count how many removals PFBC has, zero.
How many “translocations” or “reintroductions” 1 decietful/fraudulent is listed for big spring because fish that came out of a hatchery truck spawned there. No appropriate population was selected. Its actually closer to an introgression than a reintroduction if any BS brook trout survived which I doubt.
So you may say well PFBC just isn’t doing those projects but what you have to know is EBTJV members and their NGO’s/Agencies help other states with these efforts by studying them and providing input(example savage river). For christ sakes casey thomas weathers who did his dissertation at PSU worked on brook trout streams south of the mason dixion. I would think if there were a conducive environment or great opportunities to collaborate with PFBC near PSU he would have taken those?
Some people do research in PA but you essentially right now cannot study
1. Removal(their not doing it)
2. Conservation genetic projects like genetic rescue(their not doing it)
3. Brook trout prioritized management like MD, WV, VA and other states(their not doing it)
4. Brown trout displacement of brook trout(the state is behind on collecting data on this and don’t even know what they have lost) its a 2024 deliverable that will probably be delinquent like 75% of the brook trout goals from the brook trout management plan from the eary 2000’s are(WERE NOT DOING ANYTHING)
PA is a great place to study the direct competitive effects of invasive trout stocked on brook trout demographics and behavior but we have 100’s of different papers on that its been researched to death we know it’s bad already.
So if you were a researcher would you want to go to a state to study brook trout where they are an afterthought most of the streams are under surveyed and the state has taught the public to worship invasive brown trout and hatchery fish that you might need to remove????