Parks Canada recovery project flies trout from Sawback to Rainbow Lake

A westslope cutthroat trout. Shane Petry/Department of Fisheries and Oceans / Herald archives[photo]                                                                                                                         By Sarah Offin BANFF, Alta. – Fish were never meant to fly, but the once simple existence of westslope cutthroat trout has become somewhat complicated, and caused Parks Canada to take action.
    “In certain water bodies they’ve been entirely eliminated. Those are areas closer to the Bow Valley and human settlement, but also where a lot of the stocking was done. That’s what sort of caused the problem, going back as far as 100 years ago,” said Mark Taylor, an aquatic ecologist with Parks Canada.
    Cutthroat trout are a threatened species. Populations in Banff National Park have been driven out by rainbow trout, which were introduced as a favored fish for anglers over a century ago. Cutthroats breed with the rainbows, creating a hybrid species...Continue reading...