Bull Trout-Watershed Sentinels, by Lorne Fitch.
Bull trout arrived here in Alberta the hard way, the Darwinian way, across millions of years of randomness followed by some serendipity of passage near the tail end of glaciation. Their journey exemplifies the point adaptation isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Bull trout aren’t glamorous, lacking the svelte lines and colors of the other native trout, like the cutthroat with its elegant orange jaw slash and splashes of color. A bull trout is more like a guided missile-grey, utilitarian and lethal. They resemble baseball bats with fins and gills. Of course, who are we to critique the form by which evolution has met a functional demand? Bull trout, or at least their prototype, where swimming, fully formed, millions of years before we humans gained an upright stance.
Looks aside, that journey should give these fish equal standing, if not priority over economic interests related to dimensional lumber, non-renewable energy sources or motorized recreation. In standard accounting practice, resource assets are put in the ledger column called “now” and that puts at risk the tomorrow for bull trout. Our rush to use and extract the wealth of the headwaters, in the now, has left an impoverished legacy.
If Albertans were to develop some personal connections and feelings for our provincial fish, somewhere between the pragmatism of following the law for species at risk and as a cherished fellow traveler, maybe the future would be less uncertain. Like aquatic creatures everywhere, until the presence of bull trout is finally detected by more than biologists it is difficult to achieve recognition for their presence and create priority for their protection.
Bull trout are a unique, prehistoric population, a zoological rarity in many watersheds. We cannot let go of them by rationalizing they are mere glacial relicts and possibly doomed to elimination with our land use practices and, with increasing emissions only accelerating that inevitability through higher water temperatures.
It is one thing to have a mystery surrounding the demise of a species throughout its historic range. It is quite another to know why and have done so little to reverse the decline. Bull trout populations historically and, in living memory were abundant; the current trend is grim. Pulling the lever to stop catch-and-keep angling has not restored population viability at a provincial scale. The species needs better than this policy of benign neglect leading to passive euthanasia.
If we are to continue to angle for them the whole context of expectations and rewards must change. Bull trout cannot be ever considered again as just cheap protein. If we are to catch bull trout, it must be to visit them: to hold a cylinder of pure muscle and marvel at a creature that exists in a medium almost 800 times as dense as what us breathers of air experience. The next step will be to free it and then watch as it slips away into the depths and mysteries of water.
Many of us will want to fish for them, not only to connect but to reassure ourselves bull trout and all they represent still exist. It might help us, in our hubris as humans to occasionally be in the presence of a creature that epitomizes struggle and success. We can hold in our hand, however briefly, the test and the outcome of millennia of adaptation and evolution. We should be humbled by the experience. Should bull trout wink out of existence what we are in danger of losing is an association with an ancient animal.
Within human memory we have transformed our headwaters, the epicenter of bull trout populations, from a background of cold, clean, complex and connected habitats to ones markedly warmer, dirtier, simpler and fragmented. The condition of bull trout has been diagnosed, and the outcome need not be terminal, if we choose to act decisively, firmly and quickly. It may be a startling new discovery, that bull trout are inextricably linked to the landscape and stand (or swim) as an ecological surrogate, marker or symbol. We need to convey the message that the part, bull trout, refers to, and is emblematic for, the whole of watershed integrity and health. Our perception of them might shift if we recognized them as the pinnacle of an ecosystem.
So, do we have an obligation to protect bull trout? Native trout, bull trout included, are integrators and indicators, helping us understand our land use footprint and the implications and consequences for essential things delivered from our watersheds, like timely water delivery of high quality. Therein lies the reciprocal arrangement; bull trout form our sentinels. The presence and abundance of native trout signal a high degree of watershed health. Declines in these populations is a distant early warning signal about the intensity, frequency, type and cumulative impact of our land use decisions.
That confers upon us an obligation, to protect bull trout and the essential habitat upon which they rely. Inevitably, it isn’t about saving bull trout, but in saving bull trout we are saving ourselves. It is an endless fragile chain of interdependence now, tenaciously intertangled, as is the life cycle of the bull trout within a watershed.
What is at stake with bull trout, the challenge, is the ecological stability and integrity of our headwaters. These are the places where protection should resonate, in our heads, our hearts and in our mouths, to quench our thirst. That thirst is physical, for headwaters provide a drink to two out of every three Albertans. It is also metaphoric because our headwaters are the remaining symbols of wild, a heritage each Albertan should carve a place for in our collective psyche.
A recovery strategy and recovery actions are required for bull trout, because we don’t want to write a eulogy for the species, but rather, engage in writing a new chapter on securing a better future for this sentinel of our headwaters. Bull trout represent a species that was made to last; we should let them and in so doing ensure our future.
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and an Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary.
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