Picture: USFWS Fish and Marine Conservation/Flickr
Recently, we reported on the worrying discovery of quagga mussels in the Snake River. Mussels present a series of considerable issues to any waterbody they’re discovered in, consisting of a prospective collapse of the food web because they depend on comparable food that trout and other fish requirement. That’s not to point out the quagga’s capability to block water lines, which can cost countless dollars to fix and change.
In an effort to fend off the worst of the issue, the Idaho State Department of Farming (ISDA) bought a closure of the Snake River near Twin Falls, Idaho. After the closure, ISDA authorities started an aggressive treatment technique to ideally exterminate all the quagga mussels within the river system. According to KTVB7 out of Boise, the ISDA put “metered boxes with the treatment at essential mix points along the Snake River from the Twin Falls dam to Centennial Waterside Park.”
These boxes include a copper-based treatment that will not just eliminate the mussels, however regrettably will exterminate fish also. In the KTVB7 story, Mike Peterson, the Magic Valley local fisheries supervisor for the Idaho Department of Fish and Video Game (IDFG), stated that “at this moment, we are anticipating some considerable fish loss.”
IDFG is doing a lot to assist reduce the fish kill when it takes place, consisting of some thorough population price quotes. As soon as the treatment is total, fisheries supervisors can re-sample the river to see precisely the number of fish were eliminated, and utilize the population approximates to plant fish from close-by hatcheries to attempt and supplement the existing fish population. The majority of the video game fish in this area of the Snake River are sturgeon, bass, and panfish.
While it’s regrettable that we need to handle quagga mussels in the Snake River, we must be praising the efforts of IDFG and ISDA to deal with and eliminate these intrusive predators. If left uncontrolled, they might quickly infect other close-by trout capitals.
