BOZEMAN — Yellowstone National Park officials report significant progress in reducing the number of unwanted lake trout in Yellowstone Lake.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that the National Park Service says Yellowstone and contract crews culled 282,960 fish this year from the lake.
The total is smaller than last year and the year before that, signaling a decline in the overall number of lake trout.
That’s good news for Yellowstone cutthroat trout, which suffered a major decline after the detection of the nonnative lake trout 25 years ago.
More than 3.1 million fish have been removed in the effort to help bolster native cutthroat trout in the lake.
But a panel of experts told the park in May that it would need at least another five years of suppression work.