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Tahoe’s trout population faces a new threat, says commentary

Posted by: Maven on September 4, 2010 at 8:24 am

From the Sacramento Bee, this commentary by Huey Johnson:

“In the 1960s, while I was with the Department of Fish and Game, it was my sad task to study the trout of Lake Tahoe. Few remember that an atrocity against Tahoe occurred there, an atrocity comparable to the slaughter of the once great buffalo herds of the Great Plains: the completion of the nation’s first Federal Bureau of Reclamation dam.

Derby Dam blocked the Truckee River and killed the huge run of trout that had, for thousands of years, come from Pyramid Lake upriver to Tahoe. That first year, the new dam blocked tons of huge trout trying to spawn while the dam’s beneficiaries – desert hay farmers – pitchforked wagonloads of fish, which they used as fertilizer.

Back then, lovely Lake Tahoe had such a large trout population that it supported a commercial fishery. Dams like Derby disrupted that.

Unfortunately, today’s remaining frail population of Lake Tahoe’s trout is under threat again. … “


Continue reading this commentary at the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.

September 4, 2010 · Filed Under Lake Tahoe, the Sierras & foothills

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