The Bull Trout Show
The bull trout, Salvelinus confluentus, is Alberta’s official fish. This native trout species, believed to have inhabited the waterways of present-day Alberta since the last Ice Age, once populated streams and rivers from the Rocky Mountain headwaters well onto the prairies. European settlement starting in the 1800’s changed that, with settlers deeming the bull trout a ‘garbage fish’ that ought to be extirpated in favour of other trout. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, naturalists and fishers in Alberta documented the decline of the species, and in the early 1980’s, they initiated the first efforts to urge the provincial government to protect the species in Alberta. Despite nearly 40 years of local and national scientific advocacy to protect the species, where there were once thriving populations of bull trout, today there may be only a handful or even none in the waterways where they once thrived. In 2019, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (now Fisheries and Oceans Canada) declared the bull trout a threatened species under the Species At Risk Act, acting on a recommendation from the Committee on the Status ofEndangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) issued in 2012. The Government of Canada subsequently issued a species recovery strategy for the Saskatchewan-Nelson River bull trout population in 2020, and in 2021 a species critical habitat order was issued.
The Bull Trout Show
03 - The Life And Times Of The Iconic Native Bull Trout with Lorne Fitch
Would you know a bull trout if you saw one? Most anglers fishing the streams of Alberta’s eastern slopes have never seen or caught a bull trout. Yet this now rare and threatened species once populated the streams of Bighorn Country by the thousands. The culprit behind this extirpation since the 1950’s is human interference, including overfishing, introduction of non-native species, draining of wetlands for agriculture, industrial development in the forest reserve, and recreational activity. Just a bit of silt in a stream can smother eggs in a spawning bed or redd. Hanging culverts where roads cross creeks can prevent fish from migrating up or down stream to feed or spawn. One person with intimate knowledge of the life and trials of the native bull trout is biologist, author, and conservation advocate Lorne Fitch. In speaking with The Bull Trout Show’s host Cheryl Croucher, Lorne describes the bull trout as looking like “a torpedo with fins”.