A lonely trout species
A Wild Eastern Brook Trout.
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI News article, except image above.
Wild Eastern Brook Trout are the only species of freshwater trout native to Rhode Island, and their numbers are shrinking due to such factors as climate change and habitat loss.
Organizations such as Trout Unlimited and the state Department of Environmental Management believe they speak for the trout, but that doesn’t mean they agree on what the fish have to say — especially when it comes to the question of stocking Rhode Island ponds, lakes, and rivers with brook trout raised in hatcheries.
“The fish, they don’t have a voice. Nobody knows these brook trout exist here. [People] don’t see them, they aren’t like rabbits or deer, they’re invisible,” said Richard Benson, a longtime member of Rhode Island Trout Unlimited (RITU), a nonprofit that supports freshwater and fishery conservation.
These trout used to be found in waters from Maine to Georgia, but their footprint is only about 5 percent of what it once was. Opponents of the practice of stocking fish — the process of releasing fish raised in hatcheries into waterways for anglers to catch — which has been a Rhode Island practice since the late 1800s, say the stocked brook, brown, and rainbow trout compete with wild native trout.