Bull Trout - Rohan Moorjani

Bull Trout:

Salvelinus confluentus, or more commonly known as the bull trout, is an aquatic animal part of the Salmonidae family and is native to North American areas like Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Montana and Western Canada. They are commonly found in high mountainous areas where there are glaciers and snowfields present. While growing up, bull trout feed on zooplankton but once fully grown, they feast on other fish. In areas like coastal Washington, they are known to feed heavily off of Salmon eggs. Resident bull trout can grow up to 10 inches long but migratory bull fish can reach sizes of up to 35 inches and 32 pounds. Unlike the other fish in the Salmonidae family, bull trout need specifically cold waters to survive so they tend to stay in waters below 62 degrees (F).

The geographical range for bull trout in North America: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Montana & Western Canada

Bull trout are known to have more specific habitat requirements thank other fish in the Salmonidae family, including needing the four C’s: cold, clean, complex and connected habitats. The need a cold and clean environment that is suitable for reproduction and rearing. By complex, they need streams with riffles, undercut banks and deep pools. Lastly, bull trout need to have connected habitats between rivers, lakes and oceans so that they can attend to annual spawning and feeding migration.

Their population got so low that, in 1999, bull trout was listed, “as threatened throughout their range in the coterminous United States” (FWS) under the Endangered Species Act. One of the main reasons why bull trout has become listed as an endangered species is because of habitat degradation and fragmentation. Many migratory corridors have become blocked and the poor water quality has made it difficult for fish to reproduce. The introduction of non-native species, like brown, lake and brook trout have caused bull trout populations to decline. Many of the remaining populations are small, isolated and prone to extinction. Another major contributing factor to bull trout extinction is climate change. Because bull trout need cold water to thrive, warm spots throughout the waters are causing the populations to become even more isolated from one another. Climate change is also interfering with other “stressors, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, invasions of non-native fish, disease and other threats” (FWS).

As listed on the recovery plan for bull trout, the ESA plans to take the following actions to help the bull trout populations survive:

1. Conserve bull trout so that they are geographically widespread across representative habitats and demographically stable in six recovery units;
2. Effectively manage and ameliorate the primary threats in each of six recovery units at the core area scale such that bull trout are not likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future;
3. Build upon the numerous and ongoing conservation actions implemented on behalf of bull trout since their listing in 1999, and improve our understanding of how various threat factors potentially affect the species;
4. Use that information to work cooperatively with our partners to design, fund, prioritize, and implement effective conservation actions in those areas that offer the greatest long-term benefit to sustain bull trout and where recovery can be achieved;
5. Apply adaptive management principles to implementing the bull trout recovery program to incorporate new information.

If you would like to personally take action in helping save the bull trout populations, you can take the time and write a letter to your local senator. In the letter you can include points on why the bull trout needs to be conserved. Various national forests, like the Boise National Forest and the Sawtooth National Forest, use the bull trout as a management indicator species. Additionally, bull trout require cold water and low amounts of slit, which road building and logging negatively impact. Lastly, bull trout need to migrate throughout river systems but sometimes they run into dams, which prevent them from passing through. By writing to your local government representative and including a concrete argument, you can help bull trout become delisted from the Endangered Species Act. 

Work Cited: 

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/bulltrout/

http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/files/norock/products/LakeTrout_03_Info08.pdf

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/news/1997/btfacts.htm

http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=162004