In Yellowstone, Killing One Kind of Trout to Save Another

A net full of lake trout is brought aboard a 45-foot fishing boat on Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. 

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

By KIRK JOHNSON
NYT

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The first “Judas fish” have been released.

As the Biblically inspired name suggests, the fish — surgically altered lake trout, implanted last week with tiny radio transmitters on a gently rocking open boat by a team of scientists here — are intended to betray. The goal: annihilation.

“Finding where they spawn would be the golden egg,” said Bob Gresswell, a research biologist at the United States Geological Survey, and leader of the Judas team, a strike force in the biggest lake-trout-killing program in the nation. The idea is that the electronic chirps will lead trout hunters into the cold, deep corners of Yellowstone Lake, where the fish might be killed in volume. “The eggs could be killed before they hatch, maybe with electricity, or suction,” Dr. Gresswell said.

That millions of dollars would be spent to eradicate a fish that many people love, and love to eat, is only the beginning of a paradoxical new chapter for trout, long a silvery symbol of America’s wide-open spaces.

(More here.)