Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (2) – 8/14/20
Yellowstone National Park announced on Thursday that Virginia Cascades Drive and Wolf Lake Trail to Little Gibbon Falls in the upper Gibbon River drainage will be closed from Aug. 17-23 to remove nonnative rainbow and brook trout. Biologists will use a toxin called rotenone, which is a naturally occurring chemical from the roots of tropical plants, to kill off the nonnative trout. Below the treatment area, biologists will add potassium permanganate to the water in order to remove the effects of rotenone and prevent impacts to downstream waters. A map of the closed areas is available here.
This work continues the park’s efforts to create refuges that support the introduction of westslope cutthroat trout and Arctic grayling. Historic stocking of nonnative fish nearly eliminated these species from Yellowstone. Read more about these lake trout suppression efforts on EBS.
