The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are backing off a plan to add aggressive netting to an effort to reduce the number of nonnative lake trout in Flathead Lake.
The tribes initially proposed using angling and gill netting to remove 60,000 lake trout in 2010, 80,000 in 2011 and 100,000 in 2012. But tribal officials now say they are willing to consider other methods for suppressing trout.
Netting is an alternative but “it’s not the preferred alternative right now,” Tom McDonald, division manager for tribal Fish, Wildlife, Recreation and Conservation, said Tuesday at a Kalispell meeting on the topic. “It’s a clean slate.”
Suppressing the lake trout population is meant to help declining native bull trout and cutthroat trout populations. Boosting those species is the central goal of a 10-year plan developed by the tribes and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in 2000.
But lake trout are Flathead Lake’s main sport fishery and gill netting is controversial among lake trout anglers and business interests there. Fishing guides have said allowing gill netting would have a huge impact on the lake trout, but it’s not clear how bull trout would be helped.
Barry Hansen, a tribal fisheries biologist, said netting “has been put on hold because we want people’s input on how best to achieve these goals.”
An environmental assessment is being developed to define goals such as the percentage of population reduction needed, how many years the effort should last and what methods should be used.
Hansen said lake trout were introduced to Flathead Lake in 1905, but bull trout and cutthroat trout populations remained healthy until shrimp in the lake fueled a lake trout population surge in the 1980s.
There have been efforts to improve and protect fisheries habitat throughout the Flathead basin, but there has not been a bull trout population recovery, Hansen said.
“It has become clear over time that the bottleneck is in Flathead Lake,” he said.
At the end of the meeting, state and tribal officials took written comments that will be considered in developing a draft environmental assessment with several alternatives by July.
A tentative schedule calls for the selection of a preferred alternative in August, a final environmental assessment by Sept. 1 and a decision by Sept. 30.