BILLINGS – Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday he will allow some trout eggs to be shipped from a federal hatchery after blocking out-of-state shipments last week in a wildlife management dispute with the Interior Department.
Two shipments totaling 142,000 eggs were approved from the Ennis National Fish Hatchery to New Hampshire and Utah, where they will be hatched and used to stock local waterways.
Three more shipments originally scheduled for Dec. 27 to South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska remain blocked.
Schweitzer is using the shipments as political leverage in an attempt to persuade the Interior Department to change how it manages other wildlife, including bison.
He said he allowed the New Hampshire and Utah shipments after federal officials pledged to provide details of activities on the National Bison Range near Moiese in western Montana. Interior officials have rebuffed Schweitzer’s proposal to transfer some bison captured from Yellowstone National park onto the range.
“Their own rules tell them they ought to cooperate and collaborate with state fish and wildlife agencies with any shipment of wildlife. We’re just holding them to their own rules,” Schweitzer said Wednesday.
The approved out-of-state trout egg shipments will go out Wednesday or Thursday, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said. The eggs that remain on hold can be put on a chiller for several weeks but then would become unusable and have to be thrown out, according to the federal agency.
The next two months are among the Ennis hatchery’s busiest seasons, with more than 5 million eggs scheduled to be sent to state and federal hatcheries across the country.
Scheduled next week are shipments of more than 250,000 eggs to hatcheries in states including Wisconsin, Tennessee and Colorado.