Lake Mead National Recreation AreaСтраница 18 из 34

Fish by Pack Horse: How National Parks Stocked Their Lakes and Streams

How do fish get up a mountain? By horse. For decades the National Park Service (NPS) carried fish eggs and young fish to park lakes and streams in milk cans strapped to pack animals, and it planted them in the millions. Photographs from the NPS History Collection show how it was done.

Playgrounds of the people

The NPS was established on August 25, 1916. Its 1917 Director’s Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior spoke of “a determination to make the national parks more popular as playgrounds of the people, where amusements can be found in addition to the scenery.” Sportfishing was already an important pastime in some parks, and the new service embraced and expanded it to increase tourism.

Four men stand behind a string of fish, showing off their catch

Fishermen with their catch, ca. 1920s; the man holding the fish is Horace M. Albright. NPS History Collection photo.

The 1917 report noted that the number of anglers, and so the number of fish caught, was rising quickly each year. To avoid emptying the waters, the NPS expanded the fish stocking that others had begun as early as the 1870s in some areas, and with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries it began stocking many lakes and streams that had never had fish. But stocking nonnative fish for recreation did not fit the 1916 law’s mandate to conserve natural resources unimpaired for future generations. Biologists quickly pointed out the conflict, to no effect, and the NPS used “fish culture,” often on a huge scale, for many decades.

Planting fish

Parks planted eyed eggs (where the embryo’s eyes can be seen through the outer membrane), fry (fish just after hatching) and fingerlings (juveniles about the size of a finger). Milk jugs and other containers carried them over land on pack animals or by boat to the release sites. Only in the 1950s did some parks begin delivering by air.

Two men on horses lead five pack horses carrying milk cans along a dirt trail

Fish fry carried in milk cans on horses and mules, Grand Teton National Park, 1937. NPS History Collection photo by T.E. Whitcraft, HFCA 1607.

Milk cans float in the water near a boat as a man wades in the water

Milk cans and boats carried fish fry to release sites, Grand Teton National Park, 1937. NPS History Collection photo by T.E. Whitcraft, HFCA 1607.

A man standing next to a horse with large canvas saddlebags

Containers of fish fry loaded into saddlebags on a horse, Sequoia National Park, ca. 1920. NPS History Collection photo by Lindley Eddy.

A park ranger in uniform and waders bends over in a stream, holding a wooden frame in the water

A park ranger plants fish in String Lake, Grand Teton National Park, ca. 1930. NPS History Collection photo, HFCA 1607.

The scale

The history of fish culture in the NPS is complex, but the scale is worth knowing:

Park	What the essay says
Yellowstone	Had the biggest program, and its own fish hatchery as early as 1916. In 1923, a record-breaking year, it planted over 31.5 million eyed eggs, 6.2 million fry and 150,000 fingerlings. Tens of millions more followed before it officially ended stocking in 1959
Glacier	Planted almost 70.4 million eyed eggs and fry of 10 species between 1912 and 1944, many from Yellowstone’s hatchery, and millions more in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1958 the NPS and the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife agreed that decades of heavy planting “had failed to produce any notable sport fishery in the park”
Yosemite	More than 33 million fish planted from the first documented planting in 1877 through 1990, the last year of stocking

Sequoia, General Grant, Crater Lake, Rocky Mountain, Grand Canyon, Lassen Volcanic and Grand Teton were among other parks that planted tens or hundreds of thousands of fish from the 1910s to the 1950s.

How it ended

Planting went on into the 1960s even as more voices inside and outside the service spoke against it. In 1961, 2,169,385 fish were stocked in 14 parks; the next year the total rose to 2,497,871 in 12 parks plus the fish hatchery at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. In 1969 the NPS adopted the recommendations of the Leopold Report, which led to a policy to phase out stocking in national parks. By 1978 fisheries management put more emphasis on protecting species and removing nonnative ones.

Three men, one in a ranger uniform, stand in a river over a large box

Planting fish in String Lake, Grand Teton National Park, ca. 1930. NPS History Collection photo, HFCA 1607.

Sources

National Park Service, “50 Nifty Finds #6: Something Fishy” (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/50-nifty-finds-6-something-fishy.htm), drawing on the Directors’ Annual Reports to the Secretary of the Interior and the Leopold Report; rewritten in hubnx's own words.