FVTU January General Meeting

Fisheries in the Crown of the Continent - Glacier National Park

While Glacier National Park is renowned for its spectacular scenery, wildlife and hiking opportunities, the Park also supports vital populations of native fish and an active fisheries management program.

Please Join us on Jan. 21, 2014 to learn about the challenges and opportunities related to the management of the many rivers and lakes in our “backyard” national park.

At our January general meeting, Chris Downs, who assumed responsibility for managing the Parks fisheries in 2008, will provide an update on current projects underway in the Park as well as the current status of the update of the Park Fisheries Management Plan now underway. The Park is faced with many challenges including the devastating effects of invasive lake trout. On the west side of the Park, lake trout have invaded nine of twelve lakes to which they have access and are have had severe negative impacts on the survival of native fish populations. Two of the Park’s premier bull trout supporting lakes, Quartz Lake and Logging Lake, are currently at risk of losing historically robust and significant native fish populations due to invasion by nonnative lake trout.

Chris earned a B.S. in Natural Resource Management from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1990 and an M.S. in Fish and Wildlife Management from Montana State University, Bozeman in 1995. Prior to coming to work as a fisheries biologist in Glacier in 2008, Chris spent 10 years working as a Senior Fisheries Research Biologist with Idaho Fish and Game on the Kootenai River, Lake Pend Oreille and the Lower Clark Fork River.

We know this will be an interesting and informative presentation and we hope you will be able to join us. The meeting begins at 7pm at the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks conference room, 490 North Meridan in Kalispell.

Refreshments will be served, door prizes will be awarded and, as always, you don’t need to be a Trout Unlimited member to attend. Please contact Chapter President Larry Timchak at 250-7473 for additional information.