This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series brings you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.
Yellowstone National Park is temporarily closing a creek in the northern part of the park to remove invasive fish.
Buffalo Creek will be closed to the public from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7.
Biologists will remove invasive rainbow trout using a piscicide called rotenone. The park said the water at the downstream Slough Creek Campground will still be safe to drink.
Buffalo Creek is the source of rainbow trout that have been outcompeting and hybridizing with the park’s only native trout species, Yellowstone cutthroat. By removing rainbow trout from Buffalo Creek, the park says it’ll protect the native cutthroat in Slough Creek, Soda Butte Creek and the Lamar River.
Yellowstone cutthroat trout rarely occur in Buffalo Creek, but any captured by electrofishing prior to the project will be moved to waters outside the treatment zone.
In a press release, the park said Yellowstone cutthroat are the most ecologically important fish of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). They’re also highly regarded by anglers. The species has declined throughout its natural range in the Intermountain West due to competition with and predation by nonnative fish species, a loss of genetic integrity through hybridization and habitat degradation.
