Two Fish, One Fish, No Fish: ’s Fish Crisis

By Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.

r. Seuss’s One fish, two fish, perilously low levels. pany surveyor, fur trader, and mapmaker red fish, blue fish is a clas- The current status of fish populations wrote in the late 1700s: “…when a new D sic children’s story, a simple cannot be appreciated until we acknowl- trading House is built…everyone is anx- rhyming book for beginning readers. We edge where we were by reviewing his- ious to know the quality of the fish it con- need a similar rhyme to help people grasp torical abundance and distribution. Only tains for whatever it is they have they have the problems afflicting Alberta’s native fish then, will we grasp where we are, appre- no other[food] for the winter.” species. It might read like this: ciate the losses, and see the potential for In 1798 a Hudson Bay Company post Two fish, one fish, dead fish, no fish, recovery. was established on . Over 200 No grayling or goldeye, something’s It’s sad but true that just too few fish live years later Dr. Andrea McGregor painstak- amiss. here anymore. It was not always so for fish ingly quantified the harvest of fish from This one has a tumor and a rotten fin, and their downward spiral started long Lac La Biche that supported the westward There’s no home for that one to live in, before Alberta became a province. Here’s expansion of the fur trade and settlement Say, what a lot of fish there used to be, that history. in her doctoral thesis. The annual har- Where are the fish for my kid and me? vest of lake whitefish increased from 85 Grant us our daily fish… tons caught in 1800 to over 1,200 tons in My apologies to Dr. Seuss, but what no more 1875. But even subsistence harvest by a would he have thought of the sorry state Fish were once a staple in the diet of relatively small population was not sus- of fish in Alberta? Like convicts on death native peoples and fur traders, especially tainable and the fishery collapsed in 1878. row, trends indicate dead fish swimming, in the parkland and boreal forest regions. One fish collapse followed another. To where populations have been driven to David Thompson, the Hudson Bay Com- add indignity to the mortal injury of over- fishing, by the 1950s the essential water- shed integrity that supported the lake and its fish populations had been compro- mised. Insult followed indignity and by 1970 walleye had effectively been extirpated and by the 1990s pike and perch popula- tions had declined dramatically. The finny wealth of lake whitefish that encouraged settlement has been reduced to a fraction of historic levels. We’ve influenced the ecological cogs and wheels of the lake’s delicate mechanism, tipped the balance so far that the lake may not have the capability to snap back to some previous steady state. David Thompson would not be im- pressed. Fishing Near Fort Macleod 1902 File NA-4954-34 PHOTO: © GLENBOW MUSEUM

14 WLA | October 2015 | Vol. 23, No. 5 | FEATURES Arctic grayling - going, If the changes in the River What’s the matter with the ? going, gone and the loss of fish provide a lesson, it is Dr. Michael Sullivan, Provincial Fish Sci- Arctic grayling shimmer, even in tea-co- that fisheries management — maintaining ence Specialist, sums it up succinctly: “too loured water and, with their huge dorsal fish — often has little to do with how we many nutrients coupled with too few fil- fin, seem more to sail through the water manage catching fish (ie. seasons, catch ters spells big trouble for fish”. than to swim. limits, harvest size). Instead, the integrity What has changed from the Battle River This member of the trout family had a of the watershed, the integrity of habitat, of Harley Louis’s day to the one of today? historic range through the entire Peace, primarily dictates whether fish will persist As the wave of settlement and develop- Hay, and basins. Grayling or not. The cumulative effects of land and ment spread and the ecological integrity slipped between our fingers. More than water use in the Beaverlodge watershed of the watershed became more and more half of Alberta’s current grayling popula- eroded the ability of fish to persist. Several compromised, fish numbers, fish dis- tions have been reduced to 10 percent or species, consequently, have disappeared. tribution and fish health all declined. It less of their historic population numbers. In most watersheds Arctic grayling are wasn’t the space race, nor the arms race Also, there has been a 40 percent contrac- either a distant memory or, even worse, but the food production race, aided by the tion in the range of grayling waters. Most forgotten about entirely. horsepower race in farming that led to the of this contraction has happened in living decline and disappearance of native fish memory. Looking for the last from watercourses in the settled portion Examples include the Beaverlodge and Goldeye of Alberta. Redwillow rivers of north-western Alber- Goldeye have a prominent place in fish- Perhaps ironically, there is safe haven for ta. Prior to the 1980s these rivers sup- ing stories from the past. Goldeye are fish in the Battle River within the bound- ported one of the largest spawning runs of deep-bodied fish, flattened laterally and aries of Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, Arctic graying in Alberta. No grayling have silvery with large scales. They are named a military base. This isn’t a function of been seen in the Beaverlodge River since for their large, yellow-gold eyes which are armed soldiers protecting fish, but rather 1994; they are now considered “extirpat- adapted to the dim light and turbid water a landscape that is relatively unchanged. ed.” Populations in the of prairie and parkland rivers. The military base, formerly Buffalo Na- are classified as “declining.” The goldeye of the Battle River were tasty tional Park, is uncultivated, uncleared na- Why did historically abundant popu- and once abundant. Harley Louis of the tive Aspen Parkland. lations of Arctic grayling (and northern Montana First Nations near Hobbema re- The Battle River through the military pike, bull trout and mountain whitefish) called how productive fish traps were in base is where the last few goldeye can disappear from the Beaverlodge River? the 1940s: “We’d catch enough fish [gold- find habitat conditions to their liking and Alberta Fish and Wildlife investigations eye] to fill our saddlebags and ride back where pike and walleye populations make report a “perfect storm” of cumulative, for a big feed of fish with our families.” their last stand. As was the case for gray- synergistic causes that resulted in crash- It didn’t last. ling, the lesson from this safe haven on the es in fish numbers and distribution. The A fish biodiversity study sampling 128 Battle River is that effective fish popula- perfect storm came in the form of a series kilometres of the river, from the headwa- tion maintenance and restoration depends of land use decisions. Forest was rapidly ters at Battle Lake to the border, under- fundamentally on habitat. Everything else replaced by agricultural fields; riparian taken between 2005 and 2007 captured done on behalf of fish pales beside water- fringes were narrowed and often disap- just seven goldeye. A few pike and walleye shed integrity. Give me that integrity rath- peared with the patterns of settlement. were found but 80 percent of the catch er than mostly cosmetic window dressing Wetlands were drained and now roads in- consisted of white suckers and minnows. designed to make me feel good. terrupt drainage and channel flow. They Suckers are tough, resilient fish capable Even a goldeye can see that. send water to rivers faster. Both floods and of survival in harsh circumstances. Even droughts are exacerbated. they were suffering lesions, eroded fins, It’s a bear market for The Beaverlodge River has been trans- and growths. bull trout formed from a low productivity water- A provincial government river moni- Bull trout look like baseball bats with course to one with an excess of nutrients. toring program found that over the span fins. They are torpedo-shaped and simi- A small amount of nutrients promote of 2009 to 2010 the Battle River had the larly dangerous to other aquatic species. growth and are beneficial in producing poorest water quality of all river sites Think of bull trout as the aquatic version more of the things fish like to eat. Excess monitored in Alberta. The water’s so bad, of a grizzly bear – a summit predator. overwhelms the system. Oxygen is robbed goes the joke, that when the angler turns And, as with grizzlies, the range of the from the water and fish suffocate. his back, the worm makes a break for it. bull trout has shrunk drastically. Bull trout

WLA | October 2015 | Vol. 23, No. 5 | FEATURES 15A ened” under Alberta’s Wildlife Act. Pop- as a result brought back 400 fish.” ulation trends indicate that 61 percent of Yes, anglers were greedy, wasteful, and Alberta’s 51 bull trout core areas show de- even rapacious, but the bigger impacts that clines; 39 percent are stable or increasing. destroyed trout populations were the land- However, tucked into the tables and un- scape scale impacts on trout habitat: log- justifiably sunny narrative of the manage- ging, mining, hydropower development, ment plan are a series of red lights flashing agriculture, and petroleum development. out danger signals to be interpreted and The combination of overfishing and in- decoded. “Stable” populations are still be- dustrial land uses depleted cutthroat pop- low their historical levels and the word ulations until a cry rose from sport-fishers doesn’t imply the population is healthy, to restock lakes and streams. Although only that there have been no changes in cutthroat from the Spray system were survey results over the short time of mon- used initially, non-native rainbow trout itoring. Of the mere handful of popula- which were easier to obtain and rear be- tions to have increased in numbers over came the species of choice for stocking time most of them exist in areas protect- efforts. Cutthroat populations, already hit ed from industrial land use pressures. A by overharvest and habitat degradation, close examination leads to the conclusion were overwhelmed by the new, foreign that 94 percent of the provincial bull trout neighbour in their midst. population is still in trouble. It is apparent that perhaps less than five It’s a “bearish outlook” for bull trout, a percent of historical habitat is currently pessimistic future given their range has occupied by cutthroat in the Bow water- Bull trout from Allison Creek circa 1920 shrunken and continues to do so while shed, somewhat more in the Oldman. have now been eliminated from the Red- their numbers follow a similar downward Cutthroat trout are now designated as willow and Beaverlodge rivers, the North trajectory. “threatened.” River below Drayton Valley, There are approximately 5,500 genetical- the upper Crowsnest watershed – includ- It’s a cutthroat world for ly pure fish remaining in both watersheds, ing , the Willow Creek wa- the cutthroat trout which is about the present human popu- tershed, the downstream The trout is called a “cutthroat,” not from lation of the Crowsnest Pass. Not so very of Dickson Dam, the , the personality or behaviour, but rather for long ago cutthroat trout outnumbered lower , the lower Oldman Riv- a brilliant vermillion/orange slash on the people in Alberta. er and the lower St. Mary, Waterton and underside of its jaw. In the clear streams Belly rivers. In many watersheds bull trout of the upper Oldman and Bow watersheds What happened to all may have disappeared before we even seeing the flash of a cutthroat, a splash of those fish? What can we knew they had been there. liquid sunshine, is to glimpse a magnifi- do about it? These reductions in the current range of cent piece from nature’s art gallery. The simple answer to the first question is: bull trout continue. In 2005, Travis Rip- Duncan McEachran, a veterinary sur- we killed them. We may not have meant ley, then a provincial fisheries biologist, geon, traveled in 1881 from Fort Benton, to, we may not have been aware of the predicted extirpation of bull trout, in as in Montana, to Calgary along the foothills consequences of our actions and we might little as two decades, from 24 to 43 per- of the Eastern Slopes in search of possible have firmly believed more fish existed. cent of streams in the Basin ranch locations. Not only was he stunned Answering the second question is more subject to logging and road construction. by the potential of the foothills grasslands difficult – at least if we want to get off the The provincial government’s recent Bull to support a livestock industry, he com- path we’ve been on since the 1800s. Here Trout Conservation Management Plan mented on the streams that ran clear and I think the first step is to rethink what we (2012-2017) summarizes population sta- cold and were “full of trout…which are mean when we say that “fish are harvested.” tus for the species. Remarkably the report most delicious to eat.” The phrase means much more than the ob- escaped the spin doctors found in the From the June 15, 1903 edition of the vious – the fish caught and kept by anglers province’s Orwellian Public Affairs Bureau Calgary Herald comes this insight into and commercial fishers. We also harvest in 2012. Its authors clearly make the case cutthroat populations in the Bow River fish by the ways we develop, the ways we bull trout are in trouble. No wonder the watershed: “Two sportsmen went out after exploit, the ways we use landscapes. species has been designated as “threat- trout at Fish Creek one day last week and Each unit of habitat, the sum of appro-

16 WLA | October 2015 | Vol. 23, No. 5 | FEATURES Logging on , 1889-1890 File NA-35535-211 PHOTO: © GLENBOW MUSEUM priate water quality, quantity and tem- habitats, water withdrawals, and pollu- perature along with abundant overhead tion. Alberta’s fish have died by a thou- and instream cover, clean substrate and sand cuts, not a thousand hooks. riparian shading is capable of producing Fish losses in Alberta are not solely an and sustaining a number of units of fish. artifact of history — it’s a current event, Any activity that degrades or eliminates happening as you read this, in a watershed units of habitat effectively harvests fish near you. The past has an annoying way because it removes the potential for fish of trespassing into the present. Every deci- to exist. sion about how we use and develop land, A fish removed from the water on the water, and other resources is a decision end of a fishing line may die sooner, but about the fate of fish. And, the myth of death is just as inevitable when fish habi- endless growth and the policy of multiple tat is altered, compromised or destroyed. use without weighing the consequences of The difference is a fish removed by angling either mindset has sentenced many fish to usually has minimal impact on the viabili- an untimely end. Poorly designed roads such as this one in the ty of the population. Lost habitat not only McLean Creek off-highway vehicle area send silt and eliminates the existing fish but also any A prognosis for Alberta’s sediment into streams to kill fish. hope for population recovery. native fish. PHOTO: © L. FITCH Farmers, miners, off highway vehicle us- With a few tiny exceptions, there has been plementation. It doesn’t demand enough ers, roughnecks, homeowners, politicians precious little movement towards actively actions that would ultimately produce and and a cast of thousands have devastated managing or restoring fish habitat. The re- sustain fish by protecting and restoring Alberta’s fish populations without ever cent Fish Conservation and Management habitat. Since watershed management is catching let alone frying a single fish. In- Strategy for Alberta contains good words the key to keeping fish swimming every- stead, large numbers of fish, populations on integration, planning, monitoring, use one involved in land use and landscape of fish, and watersheds of fish were killed of science and stewardship to benefit fish. planning must pitch in. Fisheries biolo- through habitat alterations, loss of critical But, it is weak on the crucial issue of im- gists cannot do this on their own.

WLA | October 2015 | Vol. 23, No. 5 | FEATURES 17A It is all about priorities. There is consis- The cumulative and, in many cases, ir- habitat losses back? To answer yes means tency in policy that favors economic de- reversible loss of native fish virtually ev- we will require habitat restoration, ripar- velopment over environmental protection. erywhere in Alberta over our history of ian revival, fewer chemicals leaking into What is noticeably absent is the spine to settlement should shock us. If anything the water and, less sediment to muddy the address the thorny issues of conservation approximating this had happened to most water. The affirmative answer commits us targets and thresholds. of Alberta’s charismatic mammalian spe- to watershed improvement, true integrat- One thing about fishery collapses is that cies it likely would have made for banner ed planning, full cost accounting, and an they are not completely predictable and headlines and some level of political com- ecological approach to decision making do not happen according to some recipe. mitment to action. about future resource decisions. All the fish don’t die at once (usually); in- It is perplexing that this happened in Or, we could just answer no and call this stead they disappear in a series of almost modern times, with some level of envi- failure to act, as we have become want to indistinguishable whimpers, too quietly, ronmental consciousness and overlapping do — the price of progress. I hope that, too silently for most to notice. government responsibility. It speaks to on reflection, we will find progress some- However, we are getting better at defin- institutional barriers that preclude action, times has too high a price tag, especially ing thresholds, the crucial lines that, once poor communication between silos in when applied to fish. crossed, signal imminent fish population government, and a lack of oversight mech- In the Dr. Seuss classic that opened this collapse. Sediment from an eroding hu- anisms. Couple a reluctance to regulate essay is found this: “So, open your mouth, man land use footprint has long been rec- and enforce to this daunting list. Mostly it lad. For every voice counts.” Native fish ognized as a mortal threat for fish. The re- speaks to our failure to plan for tomorrow, need acknowledgement, empathy, encour- lationship between road density, the land to use existing evidence to guide us onto a agement and friends. use footprint, sediment, and fish popula- path of better decisions. tion persistence (or not) seems clear. The Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist, a research results are exhaustive, categor- A call for action. retired Alberta Fish and Wildlife biologist, ical, and yet unconscionably ignored as Fish, given their watery homes, are large- and an Adjunct Professor with the Univer- our land use footprint continues to bleed ly invisible to us terrestrial creatures. It sity of Calgary. sediment. isn’t that fish are actually invisible, it is that people are unused to seeing them, of perceiving that they live beneath the surface of the water. Of course, if no one sees them, are they really there at all? And, if they somehow disappear, does anyone note their disappearance? It’s this invisibility of fish that makes it too easy to disregard their present plight and the decline in habitat that supports fish. It makes it easier to ignore potential and lost capability and set erroneous goals for fisheries management. As Dr. Andrea McGregor points out: “…managers, scientists and citizens are likely to assume the ecosystem conditions of the intermediate and distant past resemble those of their own remembered history and thus can be ignored — a classic charac- teristic of the shifting baseline syn- drome”. A question Albertans should answer, be- fore the last fish swims to a watery grave,

Clean gravel substrate, one key to healthy fish popu- is this: Shall we be bold and ask for some Habitat Heaven, Blakiston Creek, Waterton Lakes lations. PHOTO: © L. FITCH of the fish harvest we have lost through National Park PHOTO: © L. FITCH

18 WLA | October 2015 | Vol. 23, No. 5 | FEATURES