Scientists have found a shocking new way to preserve native cutthroat trout in western Montana streams, and yes, it involves shocking them unconscious.

"So you use an electro current to stun the fish and then net them," said Senior Aquatic Scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Brad Shepard. "What were doing is using the current to selectively capture non-native fish and remove them.  Then we leave the native fish in a particular stream. It stuns the fish but it doesn't kill them."

After using this method, Shepard says many of the eight streams tested have doubled their west-slope cutthroat populations.

"As we removed these non-native fish over the course of time, we tracked how the native fished responded," Shepard said. "Essentially, what happened is the native cutthroat came back to numbers as high as when both the trout and cutthroat were there, so essentially it was a 1:1 replacement back to pure cutthroat for every brook trout we removed."

Shepard says the non-native fish are either put in another body of water, or given to a local food bank.

 

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