Overview

Since its creation in 1872, Yellowstone National Park has been a place set-aside for the conservation of nature and a place for citizens to experience wilderness.  One famous aspect of this wilderness is theYellowstone cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri) which is easily viewed and caught by anglers.  In 1868, even before the creation of the park, a journalist wrote of the YellowstoneLake "It is filled with fish half as large as a man, some which have a mouth and horns and skin like a catfish and legs like a lizard."  Although this man may have gone a little overboard, this statement embodies the enthusiasm with which some anglers boast of their experiences fishing in the park.

In the past, just this kind of enthusiasm has led to the decline of the trout fishery caused by over harvest and poor management.  With newer regulations such as catch-and-release policies and catch limits beginning in the 1960s the Yellowstone trout populations have since rebounded.  However, a new problem exists in the form of an introduced species to the lake.  Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) were discovered in 1994 and assumed to be introduced years before. The lake trout pose a threat not only to the native cutthroat but also to the entire ecosystem. The cutthroat are threatened by the lake trout because they compete for the same resources when they are young and are also eaten by the larger lake trout. A large lake trout can eat up to 3,000 cutthroat in its lifetime. Furthermore, cutthroat are a major source of food for many terrestrial animals. Since the lake trout live and breed in deeper waters than the cutthroat, land animals cannot prey on them. The land animals are also threatened due to the massive consumption of cutthroat trout by lake trout. Scientists estimate that without control of the lake trout population the cutthroat trout population will drop by 10%-20%.