Brook trout should be listed endangered says Ohio Division of Wildlife
Brook trout require cool, clear, clean water.
The Buckeye state lacks that, and so the Ohio Division of Wildlife recently recommended the trout, found natively in a single pocket in a single Geauga County stream, should be downgraded to endangered.
Currently, the dazzling fish is listed as threatened.
“We watched trout in a couple of our streams go away recently. That induced a sort of panic,” said Paul Pira, biologist with the Geauga (County) Park District and a longtime “brookie” admirer. “So, I guess I was behind a push to change the brook trout listing.”
Brook trout found a home in northeastern Ohio some 10,000 years ago when Lake Erie was forming — a reservoir of cool water left behind by the retreat of melting glaciers. Steams in the nearby land were quickly surrounded by forest, which lessened soil runoff, mitigated floods and shaded stretches from the sun and summer heat.
Fish were not forced to contend with lawn chemicals or wastewater either.
For centuries brook trout flourished until, that is, European settlers started cutting down trees, turning soil and dirtying streams.
Not long afterward, most of the indigenous Ohio brook trout were gone.
By the mid-1800s, trout could be found in only two northeastern Ohio stream systems. Their habitat further degraded, no brook trout were noted in either when naturalists looked a century later.
A sort of reprieve for the species occurred in 1972 when a researcher identified two reproducing colonies from the original strain of the genetically distinct Ohio brook trout in the headwaters of the Chagrin River. By 1993 one of the colonies had been eradicated as the result of stream degradation caused by home building.
With but a single cluster of reproducing native brook trout remaining, the wildlife division responded by identifying 15 streams in which establishing self-sustaining populations of the fish seemed worth a try. Stocking efforts began in 1997.
Things seemed to go well for a time, Pira said, but changing land use, coupled with more frequent heavy rainfalls, a recognized outcome of climate change, thwarted the effort.
Consequently, 15 sites “are down to three,” Pira said.
One of the three sites is the last remaining refuge of native trout holding an Ohio pedigree, untainted thus far because of care taken to avoid any mixing with stocked specimens. Recent work to improve that habitat, occurring on an 800-foot stretch owned by the park district and including the deepening of some pools, went well, Pira said.
Meanwhile, renewed restoration efforts are possible at “five of 10 streams where natural reproduction had previously been documented,” said Scott Hale, the wildlife division’s executive administrator of fish management and research.
Growing to only about 6 or 8 inches in Ohio waters and off-limits to fishermen,
the fish is lovely to behold, and its loss would leave the landscape emptier. That has to drive additional efforts to not let it disappear.
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