To the Decision Makers of the poisoning of the North Fork Blackfoot River in the Scapegoat Wilderness,
Having been involved in a similar project in Arizona nine years ago with the Forest Service, Arizona Game & Fish (same as MT FWP), the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, USFWS, Bureau of Reclamation and others, I witnessed the effort to establish/maintain a native fish population in a Wilderness and a Wild & Scenic River using fish poisons Rotenone mixed with Potassium Permanganate. I produced a 39-minute video (available at https://youtu.be/QuVUKqEkQCM) about the project so I was closely connected to all the layers of the project over several years.
Perhaps I missed the information, but how much money is this project supposed to cost? And to what end?
FWP wants to control and manipulate the fish population by creating a swimming pool and stream for the pure cutthroat trout deep in the Wilderness above the North Fork falls. All it takes is one person to throw a non-native fish in the water above the falls to destroy all the work that FWP wants to do in this Wilderness.
The entire Clark Fork River and its tributaries such as the Blackfoot River, the North Fork Blackfoot River, the Clearwater River and others are filled with non-native fish. FWP also wants to eliminate the pike in all these tributaries, which is essentially impossible. We all need to just keep fishing out the pike and other non-natives to keep numbers down as much as possible. It’s like trying to stop out-of-staters from moving into Montana. Nobody can stop the movement of non-native people or fish.
Poisoning fish in this watershed will have a short-term gain (which is questionable) and a long-term negative impact. FWP and the Forest Service are trying to create a Disney-like Wilderness with a perfect fish population. We need to continue to manage people in the Wilderness, but I believe we need to just go with the flow of fish.
As far as motorized use goes, it is not okay according to the Wilderness Act of 1964 unless it’s for emergency purposes, which I will not elaborate upon in this letter. Accessing the Wilderness to apply a piscicide to a Wilderness river is not an emergency. Taking helicopters into the Scapegoat Wilderness to haul equipment and using motors for other aspects of a fish-poisoning operation does not meet the intent of the Wilderness Act. This noisy project certainly would not allow for a “primitive experience” that provides “solitude” as required by the Wilderness Act.
Another aspect of the Wilderness Act that this proposed project violates is the requirement that visitors have an “untrammeled” experience. Readers of the Wilderness Act oftentimes confuse this word with another word, untrampled- not the same.
“Untrammeled” in the Wilderness Act means “ecological systems unhindered and free from intentional human control or manipulation”. I believe this one requirement of the Wilderness Act is enough to shut down this proposal to apply a piscicide, a fish poison, to the North Fork Blackfoot River in the Scapegoat Wilderness. If this project isn’t the perfect example of “intentional human control or manipulation”, then what is?!
Thank you for considering the true intent of the 1964 Wilderness Act and canceling this proposed project.
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